A Risk Worth Taking
by SociallyInept
Summary: A misfit pureblood witch gets bitten by a werewolf and finds herself drawn into the Second Dark War as a spy on Greyback for the Ministry. Novella length. Not consistant with 7th book.
1. The Shiny Teacup

Chessie Wharton, Dove Dogood, Mary Downspout, The Shiny Teacup, and Rose Carley are mine, but everything else belongs to Rowling. I have a few other OCs in future chapters, I'll announce them as we go.

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Table five needed more coffee, table eight was waiting for their menus, and table thirteen kept laughing jovially. The general atmosphere was noisy and comfortable, but crowded. The whole diner smelled of coffee and eggs and sizzling bacon due to the morning crowd. Chessie rushed from table to table, refilling drinks, taking orders, being frazzled and underpaid. Her hair, which normally looked slightly electrocuted thanks to her black background, had been beaten into a half-bun, and if one looked they would see slim but solid muscles under the cheesy yellow diner uniform dress from years of providing for herself.

Once the breakfast rush was over and the diner was occupied exclusively by the employees, Chessie and her two fellow waitresses dropped their guard and as they restocked napkins and salt, they discussed the latest Daily Prophet slanderings.

"Did you hear about those new werewolf laws?" Mary, a clueless bleached-blonde witch in her late sixties twittered.

"Why do you read that crap, anyway?" Dove Dogood, a gothic young witch a year younger than Chessie- she'd been in Ravenclaw, Chessie recalled- retorted over her upside down copy of the Quibbler. "The government's lying about the war, they have been for years."

Mary tossed a damp washcloth over the shoulder of her starched yellow-and-white uniform while Chessie rolled her eyes. _Another fight so soon? This is the third today, and it's not even noon! _

"That's nonsense!" Mary almost yelled, "I've read the Daily Prophet for over forty years and I've never once, in all that time, had any reason to doubt any of it!"

Chessie stepped in before anyone could get physical. "Now," she said as neutrally as possible, "Sometimes the Prophet tells the truth and there's nothing to worry about, but," and here she glared pointedly at Mary, who was red with unjustified fury, "sometimes they do exaggerate or underplay some things."

"That miserable Skeeter woman-." Dove started.

"Was fired over three years ago." Chessie responded firmly, holding her hand up like a stop sign. Mary and Dove glared at each other, but decided to drop the matter for the moment.

Near the end of her shift, eight or so that night, Mary appeared by Chessie's elbow. Dove had gotten off early to apparate home. Out of the three witches, Chessie was the only one who lived even remotely near Ottery St. Catchpole, where the diner was located. Mary and Dove apparated to and from work each day. Magical upbringing or not, Chessie walked to and from work. It wasn't that far, only about three miles. If anyone were to try to attack her, she had her wand and another random stick she'd smoothed and polished keeping her hair in its poor bun. If anything attacked her, well, she had her wand and experience from living on her own for far longer than she should have been.

"Listen, dear, you don't really think that the Prophet over exaggerates everything, do you?" Mary asked pitifully from around Chessie's shoulder. Chessie was relatively tall, five foot eight or so, and Mary was one of those small, stocky, stone-like women who always were underestimated.

"Oh, er…." In truth, Chessie didn't really care. She tried to distance herself from the heart of the wizarding world and the war raging within it and so far, since she didn't bother returning for her seventh year at Hogwarts two years before, she'd succeeded.

"Because I think they're right, and they're definitely right about this- the werewolf problem in Great Britain has gotten ridiculous and the Ministry's got every right to open this jail for them."

_Jail?_ Chessie paused, then finished locking up the Teacup. Mary shivered in her pink flowery jacket and glanced up.

"Full moon tonight, dear. Be careful!" And with that, Mary Downspout looked both ways in the bright moonlight and apparated safely home, where she did Merlin knows what. Chessie yanked on the doorknob once or twice to make sure it was locked properly and dropped the key in this little crack between two bricks where it could only be fished out with a bobby pin or Summoning Spell, depending on the upbringing of whoever opened in the morning. That was about as complex as security needed to be in Otter St. Catchpole. Nothing ever happened in a town with a population of less than a thousand citizens. And so Chessie never worried about living on her own here.

She'd found the place during the summer after her fifth year, when she'd deliberately not returned to her violent home for the second year in a row. It was steaming hot outside and she'd been walking for almost a week, and finally spent the last of her stolen money (one of her Slytherin dorm mates was rich and hadn't even noticed the skinny kleptomaniac delicately going through her stuff) on a room in a boarding house. She'd spent the remainder of that week exploring the town, and finding it was absolutely perfect for her. Small enough that her presence would be noticed and a job could be provided- which it had at the end of that week, at the then brand new Shiny Teacup- but it was also big enough that not everybody knew everybody. And then, as her sixth year at Hogwarts drew to a much-wished for close, she bought a small but cozy house across the street from a sweet family who let her baby sit their young daughter sometimes.

No one tried to contact her either. Not her family. Let them play for power; Chessie would have none of it. She did okay on her own though. Just enough money to keep her comfortable and relatively happy while building up her bank account as well.

As she reached the dirt road that ended in the cul-de-sac where her house and a few others sat surrounded by forest and farmland, she heard a loud, long howl not very far away. The moon was only partially up, and it was full and silver, watching Chessie. Even though her dark skin helped her hide in the night, her stupid accursed cheerful yellow and white Teacup uniform stood out like a beacon. She tried to ignore the elements of the moment that could add up unpleasantly, and merely picked up her feet and walked a little faster.

The next howl, shorter and less resonant, was much closer.

She kept glancing around, seeing imaginary eyes watching her out of bushes and from the darkness between the trees lining the road and hearing quietly shifting brush- no, wait, that was actually happening- ahead of her!

A shape formed from the shadows behind the two floor house opposite Chessie's- four legs, big dog-like physique, and a very scary growl that made Chessie's human instincts paralyze her for a moment. Werewolf? In Ottery St. Catchpole? Preposterous. But still. Assuming it was a werewolf, and it was on the prowl in this nowhere town, what would it be doing here? Didn't werewolves like children, or was that just Greyback? She'd heard horrible stories. Who hadn't? She tried to not exist and sneak into the relative safety of her own house simultaneously.

The wolf was circling around the Carley's house, nose in the air. They had a young daughter, the Carleys did. Rose. How old was she? Six…Oh dear. She was torn. Go inside and call the aurors and hide in her attic until it was safe to emerge, or try to save the kid? She blinked as she fumbled for her wand. Save the kid? What was she, a Gryffindor?

_No, you're a dropout who ran away from Slytherin because she couldn't handle the pressure of failing at everything she tried._.

_Oh yeah. Damn_.

She grimaced and hit her door with her fist softly. Rose was too sweet to have her life ruined. Still though, she wanted someone- a lot of someones- with training to be there too. Preferably in front of her. She raised her wand and sent a red flare up. That should alert the muggle relations division pretty quickly. Rose and her family were muggles. _It is not my problem_, she thought, as she unlocked the door to go hide.

A high-pitched scream filled the air, ending with a strangely out of place trill that only Margaret Carley could manage to make with her wavery voice. Before she realized what she was doing, Chessie had turned around and run across the road, wand hand at the ready as she kicked the door open with strength she'd gained from working in food and knowledge from surviving in school. In the back of her mind, the part of her that rather liked being alive protested weakly, but was covered up by the sound of a growl.

The growl was coming from beside the stairs, where a very large- much larger up close- silvery black wolf was looking at Chessie like she was dinner.

They looked at each other. The wolf with hunger evident in its eyes and blood around its mouth, Chessie with fear and dismay.

The wolf hurled itself at Chessie and the world went red, then black.


	2. The Auror and the Werewolf

The Auror and the Werewolf

Chessie groaned and put one of her dark arms over her eyes. The nurse across the room spooked and dashed out, not even bothering to explain herself. She stared at the ceiling for a few minutes from under the relative safety of her bare arm, trying to get her bearings and still being confused. _Where the hell am I? What's going on?_ she wondered, but felt too lethargic to attempt to yell after the quickly-retreating nurse.

A man in Healer robes came over to her grimly, clutching her medical chart in one white-knuckled hand.

"Hello," he said in a resigned tone, as though he was required to do this but didn't particularly care to, "I am Healer Browne. I need to ask you a few questions to see how much you remember of what happened to you two nights ago."

"Two nights?" Chessie asked in a surprisingly scratchy voice. _Wow, what happened? It's been two days? I lived?_

"What is your name?" the healer asked as he conjured a quill and began taking notes on her condition.

"Chessie Wharton. Chessandra, actually, but-."

"Age."

"Um, nineteen."

"Address."

"13 Wheedle Way, Ottery St. Catchpole-."

The healer looked up sharply at her as he asked his next question.

"Why were you out during a full moon?"

Chessie paused. _Full moon, why did that sound familiar- oh. Damnation. Ha, how ironic. What a detailed nightmare_._ Surely it's just a coincidence. Surely._

"Miss Wharton, must I repeat myself?" The healer wasn't even going through the motions of being friendly now. Some strange…feeling…inside of her told her mutely that the man was practically radiating fear. _How the devil do I know this?_

"Oh! Oh, yes. I was walking home from work."

"Where-."

"The Shiny Teacup. It's a muggle diner. I worked from 8 to closing, at 8."

There was a knock at the door to the hall, and two people entered without waiting for a response. They were both rather tall, but one was younger and had pink hair, while the older one was- Remus Lupin? A slightly older and greyer Lupin than from her fifth year at Hogwarts, but still. As the pink-haired witch tripped over something that likely didn't actually exist, Chessie saw AUROR in bold white letters across the back of her black robes. Lupin paused to help her up with a small unprofessional smirk, and they made it to Chessie's bed without further incident.

"Healer Browne," The Auror said pleasantly, "Questioning victims about more than their identity isn't really your job."

The icy healer sniffed in disdain and strode off to harass any poor apprentices he came across. Pink-Hair smiled at Chessie warmly and surprisingly genuinely, a welcome change from that horrible man.

"Wotcher. I'm Auror Tonks, and this is Remus Lupin." She sat down without hurting herself on the foot of Chessie's bed while Remus sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair provided for visitors. "Your friends Dove and Mary are very worried about you, Chessie."

"He- the healer said I'd been out for two days," Chessie said. Her voice, now that it was being used again, wasn't nearly as ragged. She almost sounded like herself.

Lupin nodded. "About two and a half days, considering that it's just after breakfast."

Tonks looked slightly less cheerful now, but still friendly and open. "Do you remember anything that happened two nights ago?"

Chessie thought back. Mary and Dove's argument, Mary's warning, the walk home, the scream…kicking the door in and sensing, rather than knowing, that she was about to die….

"Oh, hellfire. It wasn't a dog." She sighed and rubbed her temples, propping herself up against the headboard of the bed. Lupin was watching her sharply. The little presence in Chessie's mind had quieted when he sat down, but it was still there. "I know it wasn't a dog. Dogs don't do that."

"Werewolf." Tonks said quietly. Chessie started, and then nodded. Denying it wouldn't do any good.

"Yeah." She said sadly. She knew then that Mary wouldn't be on her side anymore.

"I'm going to ask you to remember as much as you can. You don't have to be exact, but be as accurate as you can. Any details may help."

"Greyback," Lupin muttered to Tonks, who gasped but didn't lose her concentration on Chessie as she told her what had happened when she left work that night.

"Okay, so…you live on Wheedle Way. How close are your neighbors?"

Chessie wasn't sure where this was going. "Well, it's a cul-de-sac, the Rosenbaums live to my left- they can see down the road from the front of their house- and the Carleys live across the street from me."

"Families with children?" Tonks muttered, slouching slightly as she sat Indian-style at the base of the cot. She looked like she already knew the answer but wished she didn't.

"Yes. The Carleys have a daughter, Rose. I mentioned her. She's six. Her parents are worried that she won't get into Hogwarts, because her aunt- Margaret Carley's sister- is a witch. Rena Wisen."

"The Rose Carley in that bed over there?" Tonks leaned to her left so Chessie could see across the room to the cot across from her. A sunbeam from a large cheerful window highlighted wavy golden locks and a sickly pale face. Enchanted floating clipboards duly recorded every movement the child made, inside and out.

Chessie stared, and then tossed the blanket off her and slowly and clumsily walked across the room in the hospital gown (covering everything) over to the little girl. She gently pushed some of Rose's golden hair out of her face. She'd baby sat the girl. Watched- and helped- her grow into the beautiful six year old she was. And here Rose was, lying like a discarded rag doll in a hospital with her thick owlish glasses on a small table beside her. Chessie caught her reflection in one of the lenses.

"Can I -can I see a mirror?" she croaked, staring into the lenses of the glasses. Lupin handed her one from an empty bed nearby. She shoved some of her frizzy mass of hair out of her face and willed herself to look at her reflection. Same dark brown skin, just slightly ashy from shock and trauma. Same nest of dark brown hair with the failed attempts at magically highlighting it nearly grown out. The biggest circles she'd ever seen under her eyes were vibrant and purple. At least they'd go away with sleep and a good shower and meal. And her eyes- _what the bloody hell?_

They were usually greenish, something that Chessie had never understood since she and both of her parents were black, but she had always attributed to some random interracial marriage a few generations ago or something along those lines. But her strange green eyes were even stranger- they had little specks of gold in them. Not hazel, because the color was definitely not brown. It was a honey gold, almost like Rosie's hair.

"What's wrong with my eyes?" she asked, unable to tear her eyes away from he reflection. Tonks and Lupin exchanged a look, and Lupin ran a hand through his grayish brown hair.

"We've established that you're a werewolf, right?" he asked tiredly.

"Yeah," Chessie nodded absently.

"Well, when you're bitten, the wolf transfers…an essence of itself to you, along with the more obvious physical implications of being lycanthropic. At the very instant you're bitten, not only are you becoming a werewolf but in a small part of your mind, a…shadow of the wolf's mind is developed, and you can choose whether or not to listen to it or succumb to it. You…did. But the Aurors got you back fairly quickly…." He stopped talking and watched Chessie.

_Well, bugger. Wait a bloody second-_

"What's this about 'fairly quickly'? You mean I was…feral or something?" She sat back down on her own cot, mirror forgotten. Tonks didn't look at her.

"When the muggle relations division contacted us- thanks for doing that, incidentally- and said that a werewolf was spotted near Ottery St. Catchpole, the trained werewolf capture unit was across the country and wouldn't have gotten there in time. So several of us Aurors apparated over and found a very pissed off you before we even got to Greyback. You tried to attack Blackwell, but we got you back and he's okay. He's already joking about it, good bloke. It wasn't for more than a few minutes. That's why your eyes are like that. Full ferals have entirely gold eyes- wolf eyes, if you will- but yours are only speckled because you were only feral for about half an hour."

Chessie tried desperately to ignore the grave importance of "We got you back."

"How do you know all of this?" she asked pitifully, indulging in a little post-trauma shock.

"Miss Carley and you are not the only werewolves in the room," Lupin smiled grimly. Before Chessie could entirely digest what that may have meant, a small quiet voice groaned.

"I'm thirsty," Rose muttered softly. Healer Browne burst back into the room from his advantage point on the other side of the hall and shooed the Auror and the Werewolf out, saying that this was indeed his job, thank you, and they could finish their discussion when the two checked out later.


	3. Close Call of the Feral Variety

Close Call

She still wasn't sure what sort of strings Auror Tonks had to pull to let Chessie take Rose with her when she checked out, but she was glad they were together. Rose had nowhere to go, except with her former baby sitter. Her mother was dead, killed mercilessly by Greyback, her father was who knew where. Her witch aunt had been notified but refused to take the girl in. So that left Chessie, who was more than willing.

They were sitting on a stoop in a slightly seedy part of London enjoying the weather while Chessie idly went over finances, figuring out how much money she had and how much more she needed but didn't have. Her bank account wasn't that bad, it was enough to support her for about six months if she'd lost her job for some unaccountable reason- but it wasn't enough to support a child as well for very long at all. She hadn't accounted for the possibility of supporting a child at nineteen years old. The Ministry had seized her house in some loophole in a law three weeks ago while she'd been in the hospital, and Tonks and a few other aurors were trying to get it back to her but it was looking like it was going to be a long process. Scrimegour was not a fan of werewolves. It came with being a politician.

This part of town wasn't that bad, overall. Lower middle class, for the most part. However, a gang seemed to run these few streets, because no one was out after sunset. Ever. Once a few days ago, a woman had actually pulled Chessie and Rose off the street and wouldn't let them go until dawn, because it was too dangerous. They'd gotten two good meals and baths out of the process, and Chessie got to do the pitiful briefcasefull of laundry the two had combined. In return, she had helped the woman clean her flat and do some of her finances. She'd always had a head for money, and it was easy enough to help the woman discover she actually had thirty more pounds than she'd thought, which in this neighborhood was quite a bit of money. She gave Chessie four pounds and told her to get Rose something sweet one day soon right before they left. Overall, the only pleasant night they'd had in the past two weeks, since being released from St. Mungo's.

Today was a close second though. Rose was happily working on a vanilla ice cream cone on the concrete railing beside Chessie, swinging her legs and watching people hurry by in a slightly frayed skirt and flip flops, her golden hair pulled back in a ponytail. Chessie was in jeans, old tennis shoes, and a dark blue t-shirt, and her frazzled hair was straining the twisty holding it back at the nape of her neck.

She looked up through her eyelashes as some bulky men paused on the sidewalk right in front of them. They were both rather large and unkempt. They wore leather jackets and dark sunglasses and the smaller of the two was still well larger than average. The larger-though not by much- glanced at Rose, who had paused in her ice cream and was silently waiting for Chessie to tell her to run or scream or do anything.

"What are you doing here?" The larger stranger asked in a ragged low bass. Chessie's wolf instinct- that's what she'd decided it was not long after her talk with Tonks and Lupin- prickled at the back of her neck.

_Ah, more werewolves. What fun._

She stood up and after motioning at Rose to stay right there (a secret code meaning, "if you get the signal we discussed, drop everything and run and I'll find you as soon as I can."), stood on the bottom stair. The men still stood about a foot taller than her.

"What do you want?" There was no need to pretend that they were good news. Not with some of the stories the neighborhood juveniles told. Plus, her little-wolf voice was throwing a small fit. It loved the way these guys felt, dangerous and wild. The Slytherin in Chessie, buried as it was, simply replied 'no' and her mind was under her complete control again.

The smaller man grinned, showing teeth that were slightly fanged and made Chessie wonder what color his eyes were under the sunglasses. The glasses themselves were too dark to see through even remotely.

"Why, Greyback's been lookin' for the girl who tried to stop him. 'E's got a bit of a score to settle with her." He said maliciously.

_Bugger_.

"Good luck finding her." Chessie said. "I have to go."

Behind her, Rose finished her cone and, licking her pale fingers, began gathering Chessie's pocket-sized finance book and the briefcase up, ready to start running. Chessie started to turn away, but the larger werewolf grabbed her arm roughly.

"I don't think you understand the situation properly, girlie. Greyback wants you. He likes a bit of spirit."

"Among other things," the other werewolf chuckled.

"But I don't want him!" Chessie cried, trying to yank her arm away and do too many things at once. Was anyone else on the street? Anyone large, and preferably armed? Not yet. "I don't want to go with you, you pervert! Someone, help! He's trying to kidnap me!" She said overly loudly. Rose dropped gracefully over the edge of the concrete banister into a bush, where she settled in to watch the show in safety.

A man peeked his head out of a first-floor window next door. "Oi, what's going on? I can't hear my program on the telly!

"Quite sorry, sir," the large man tightened his grip on Chessie's arm. She could feel it bruising. "Havin' a bit of a problem with the missus, that's all."

The man hanging out his window glanced at Chessie, who tried to look as scared as possible. It wasn't hard. He thought for a minute, then shut his window and opened his door.

"It looks like she doesn't want to go with you, sir."

Chessie shook her head frantically. _Help me_, she tried to tell him mentally. It may have worked. He frowned a little.

"Maybe you should let her go, sir. I think you're hurting her arm there."

"And maybe you should go back inside, you little twit!" the smaller werewolf snarled, clearly not interested in presenting a front. The man glanced at Chessie in concern, but returned into his house, locking the door behind him.

_Bloody muggles._

Rose discovered, while hidden in her bush beside the stoop, a bouncy ball in the old briefcase Chessie carried their stuff in. She took aim carefully, knowing in her six year old mind- almost seven year old mind- that one shot was all she was going to get, and if she missed they would hurt Chessie more and find her as well.

So the pink bouncy ball caught the burly werewolf trying to drag Chessie away by her bicep completely by surprise. His dark sunglasses flew off, revealing heavy brows over pure gold eyes, the eyes of a feral. Chessie took the opportunity to use her free arm to jab her thumb into one of his crazed eyes, distracting him enough to slip out of his grip and dodge the other wolf before they had time to react.

"Run!" she shouted as she ran past the bush, where Rose jumped out with the briefcase and tried her best to keep up with Chessie's fast pace. They were heading straight into the heart of London, where there were crowds and everything smelled different yet blended together to make tracking impossible.

They didn't stop running for easily fifteen minutes, to the point that Rose was barely breathing from panting so hard and Chessie, who was one of nature's runners, was even slightly out of breath.

"The slums: bad idea," She managed to gasp out. "From now on we stay in the wizarding world, okay?"

Rose was doubled over taking deep breaths, "Okay." She was silent for a few minutes. "What's a wizarding world?"

_Oh yeah. Bugger_. Rose was a muggle.


	4. The Fever

Yeah, this is a shorter chapter. In my handy dandy writing notebook I randomly stopped marking chapter ends, so I'm having to go back through and do them as I type the story up.

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Rose's face was unusually pale. When Chessie put a hand to her forehead, the young girl was hot and clammy. It had started about two days ago, but had gotten bad enough that the child would just lay there in a small ball and whimper. Chessie kept thinking she needed to find Lupin or that pink-haired auror. They'd know what to do, and if not, well, Lupin was one of the most famous werewolves of the time. He'd have connections…hopefully.

But where to look? She hadn't actually gone through the brick wall behind the Leaky Cauldron yet, not with Rose. She wished in retrospect that she'd dragged them both through immediately. Rose couldn't come with her though, being almost delirious and completely muggle. Actually…. But Chessie hadn't been back in the wizarding world for nearly three weeks, since the bite. She had a gut feeling that the average wizard would be less than receptive to her plight, and one look at her freaky eyes would scare the good-hearted ones away before she could tell the story. On the other hand, Rose wasn't doing very well and Chessie would just have to put aside her prejudices and concerns regardless of how much she hated to. And as steeped in the wizarding world as Lupin was, the only way to find him would be to reenter the world she forsook a few years ago.

Groaning, she stood up, popping her sore back in. Cobblestones were not an adequate replacement for a good mattress. Rose shivered in her sleep despite being covered up by a fleece blanket, two jackets, and one of Chessie's bohemian skirts she'd found behind a store awhile back. Picking the child up and laying the briefcase across her awkwardly, Chessie started towards the run-down pub that held the entranceway to the magical world.

She stood in front of the Leaky Cauldron half an hour later, as the sun was going down and a light drizzle was beginning to fall. This was the hard part. If Chessie remembered correctly, her wand was in the bottom of the briefcase. Not very helpful. Rose hacked a few times and mumbled something unintelligibly. Gritting her teeth, Chessie used her butt to walk backwards through the chipped green door, and managed to get through the pub unnoticed. There must be a special going on or something. The place was packed and buzzing, unusual for that time in the late evening, and Chessie was overwhelmed for a few moments by all the scents and noise. The pub wasn't this obnoxious when she was last there. By the way Rose unconsciously wrinkled her nose, she felt the same way. Deciding to just breathe later, she weaved through the crowd to the back door, where another problem occurred. How to get in?

Chessie leaned Rose, still bundled up in a cocoon, against some trashcans in a corner.

_I'm laying a sick child against a trashcan. I'd make such a good parent._

She didn't even need to get her wand out. A portly man with a dumb-looking bowler opened the wall and passed into Diagon Alley without so much as a glance at the werewolves. Chessie grabbed Rose hastily and followed him, barely making it through before the wall reformed with an ominous finality.

_Now what?_

The drizzle from a few minutes ago turned into a full downpour in the middle of Chessie's idle stroll down the main street, and she dove into a doorway with an overhang with a cry of dismay. Rose whimpered, but didn't open her eyes. Not a good sign. The older werewolf put her hand against Rose's forehead and almost checked for burn marks when she removed it a few seconds later. The girl's fever had worsened, and she was covered in icy sweat. Chessie sighed and settled in, tucking Rose in neatly between her and the wall to shield her from the cold rain.


	5. Mum's Herbal Tea

Hi again. Don't'cha love snow days? I actually do things that involve story typing on such occasions. Trust me, typing is the easy part. I haven't finished this story yet on paper.

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She'd fallen asleep there, on the sheltered stoop with her sick six year old wrapped up in every spare piece of clothing they owned. And the way Chessie realized this was the way she was woken up, falling through a doorway that had until recently had a door in it.

And if that hadn't waken her up enough on its own, the body soaring over her head and into the muddy road as she fell inside the building made sure her eyes were wide open. And bodies soaring over her that cried "Bloody hell!" on their way down were an eye opener indeed.

Before her head even hit the ground Chessie was already crying out "I'm sorry! So, so sorry, but it was raining and-." She paused when she saw the man who had tripped over her roll over and sit on his butt in the muddy street while he digested his situation. She saw a bit of red hair the exact shade of a violent explosion underneath the dull brown of the mud, and confused brown eyes sizing her and her sleeping companion up.

"Sorry," she whispered weakly. The 'WWW' she'd noticed subconsciously on the door must be the initials for that Weasley joke shop she'd read a miniscule article about in the Daily Prophey a year or two ago. Chessie remembered that she'd wandered why in Merlin's name someone would open a joke shop in the middle of a dark war.

_Why, to create awkward situations between owners and unwelcome squatters, of course._

"Are you alright?" the redhead- one of the infamous Weasley twins- asked in a smooth voice. Was this man, whom she'd inadvertently tripped and made fall into a giant oozy puddle, concerned for _her_? Those clothes weren't of mud-diving quality.

"I'm…" Chessie began slowly.

"Cold," Rose murmured from within the pile of clothes, shivering violently.

"Well, hello there, Cold." The dirty redhead began, lifting himself from the mud. "I'm George."

Rose's temperature soard over one hundred degrees that niht as she lay bundled up in all the blankets the Weasley twins could find. For the first time in weeks Rose was clea. Her normally tanned face was pale once again now that the dirt was removed from it, and her wavy hair was gold once again and spilled out over the pillow. There was an unnatural flush in her cheeks, and when she was conscious, her eyes were too bright a blue.

She cried for her mother a lot.

Chessie didn't cry, she just was. Was there with soup, her gold-speckled green eyes worried. She was there with antibiotics, creamy cocoa hands as steady as possible. And she was in the shower a lot, taking a few minutes every so often to glory in the feeling of cleanliness she hadn't realized how badly she'd missed.

Fred, after learning of the situation at hand- the stranger and a sick child on the stoop, had gone off that morning to locate Lupin via Hogwarts, but the lack of his return wasn't promising. George stuck around doing a surprising amount of nurturing for a guy.

"My mum rubs off," he explained.

They sat together in the kitchen as she, bundled up in the most modest and oldest bathrobe she could locate, and he, in a yellow sweater with a large 'G' on it, sipped some kind of herbal tea that actually helped soothe Chessie's shattered nerves.

"My mum sends about four liters of this stuff over every week. I'm afraid it's all we have right now. Hadn't counted on company." George smiled apologetically. Chessie grinned politely and resumed sipping her tea.

Silence grew until the tick of the small wall clock was all that kept it from being lethally crushing.

Chessie broke the silence first. "You don't happen to have family in Otter St. Catchpole, do you?"

George blinked. "I do actually, why? How'd you know that?"

"I used to live there."

"I never saw you." She could tell George was running faces and names through his head. "What was your name again?"

"Chessie Wharton. But don't worry, I only lived there for about five years."

"Oh. Well, I don't feel too bad in that case. Why'd you leave?" He took a small sip of tea, his eyes never leaving hers. _Why is he being so nice, anyway?_

"I had a…medical condition arise. As did Rose."

"A medical problem that requires you to desperately seek out known werewolves while sleeping on people's stoops on rainy days."

"…Yes," Chessie hesitated.

"You know, Lupin mentioned some werewolves in the area not too long ago…" George commented offhand, as though he already knew. _But how would he?_

She put her mug down on the counter with unnecessary force. "It's Rose and me who are the wolves, okay? I was walking home from work one night, happy as I could be given my stupid life, and the next thing I know I'm in St. Mungo's with nurses dropping things whenever I cough. I can't go home because people will know why I was gone. Rose can't go home because no one will take her. I have almost no money- who plains to raise a kid at nineteen?- and now Rose is sick and I'm using a complete stranger's shower as a security blanket."

"For which I would like to thank you, by the way. Clean people are much easier on the nose."

Chessie's frustration was gone at that as a smile rose unbidden to her face. It felt good to smile.

The front door swung open, letting more spring humidity in.

"Oy," Fred called, "We've got company!"

George looked away from Chessie and headed into the hall, where a matronly voice called out:

"George, it's Mum! Fred told me someone was sick."

Chessie went and leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched as who could only be Mrs. Weasley crushed the twin bachelors in a death hug as soon as she was up the stairs into the twin's home from the store below.

"Mum…Mum!" One of the twins (_the one that smelled like summer and sunrise- George_) gasped. Mrs. Weasley opened her eyes and saw Chessie in all her frazzled, crushed, nonexistent glory. The middle-aged woman looked kind and sugary, but with the sharp eyes of a good mother. She released her sons and rushed forward.

"You must be the lady Fred told me about. He was right, you are gorgeous-!"

Behind her, Fred was mouthing something with a stricken expression on his face.

"I said nothing of the sort!"

But Mrs. Weasley had already moved on. "You look exhausted, dear. Would you like some of my herbal tea? It'll do you wonders."

Chessie wasn't sure, even though she'd just finished a cup. She'd never had a person offer her anything in such a loving and concerned tone before. She'd run away at fourteen _because_ of her mother.

George must have known she wasn't sure about his mum because he changed the subject quickly, much to Chessie's relief. "Rose is the sick one, she's in here- Fred, can you…?"

Fred took one look at Chessie and George and smirked to himself as he led the superwoman into the guest room, where Rose was lying asleep. As soon as they'd left, Chessie turned to George with an arched eyebrow.

"You called your mother?"

George blushed slightly. "Fred did, not me."

Fred popped back into the hall, looking disappointed he hadn't interrupted anything. "So I hate to be the one to point this out, but Mum's using the guest room with the little blonde and I don't feel like sharing a bed."

"You can use my bed, I'll sleep on the sofa." George offered chivalrously. Chessie shook her head in slight horror.

"No, not in your own house! I'm a guest, I'll stay in here. On the sofa."

"But-." Protested George.

"No, it's not like-." Said Chessie.

"-You've slept in a bed lately-."

"Good night, you two. Don't argue too loud, I'm going to try to sleep." Fred sauntered off slowly with a devious look in his eyes.

"I'll sleep-." Chessie tried.

"GET IN MY BED!" George shouted, realizing too late how quiet the house had gotten. Molly Weasley dropped something in the guest room.

"George!" She cried in a scandalous tone.


	6. Hairy Legs

Hi again. I'm about a third through typing what I have up, so soon the new chapter alerts shall end.

* * *

"This is ridiculous." George muttered, staring at the ceiling.

"At least it's comfy." Chessie wriggled her way further under the covers beside him. "It could be worse."

"How so, you crazy wiggling werewolf?"

She giggled, slightly uncharacteristically, at the next thought she had. "I could be a man."

"And it could be daylight," George added, warming up to the thought.

"And we could be locked in."

On the other side of the door, Fred froze with the key before slowly creeping back to his own room, guilty.

"You could have at least shaved. Get those hairy legs away from me." George pretended to kick her away.

"What, does my little furry problem freak you out?" Chessie froze as soon as the words left her mouth.

There was a really awkward pause. She silently moved back to her side of the bed and stared at the bit of the ceiling above her head.

"No." George said softly after awhile. He sounded tired.

"Huh?" said Chessie deceptively calmly. Inside her mind was a whirlwind of inner voices yelling at her for being so careless with her words. The little critical voices were being dulled very rapidly by the allure of a warm, soft bed with a decent if not odd guy in it.

"You could be a were-grim or something and I still wouldn't mind."

She blushed a little in the darkness. "Why?"

Chessie heard him sigh agitatedly.

"You're amazing."

A few minutes elapsed before she could speak again.

"No I'm not," she turned onto her right side so she could see George's face. "Amazing people don't live their life like I have mine."

George could see the moonlight through the window- a few days from full- highlighting her crazy dark brown mess of hair, and he could just see her eyes in the dim silvery light. "That's a matter of opinion, of course. What makes you such a horrible person?"

"Well, I ran away when I was fourteen," she started, holding a finger up to count.

"Why?" George propped himself up as well so he could see her face better. _He has nice eyes._

"My mother and father…they argued a lot. And drank when no one was around. And whenever they got mad enough, they'd fight. But in public they were the epitome of model wizarding citizens. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, so when I went to my fourth year at Hogwarts, I didn't go home afterwards."

"Hogwarts? I don't remember you there either."

"I was in Slytherin. Not nice enough for Gryffindor, too tough for Hufflepuff, not smart enough for Ravenclaw. The leftover."

"You don't think very positively, do you?" George asked mildly, smiling to himself. "Don't answer that. What else have you seen and/or done that makes you less than amazing?"

"I never stand up for anyone, let alone myself. One time this girl I work- worked with at the diner, Dove, was getting some grief from an old ex-boyfriend, and I just watched. Didn't bother standing up for her or anything. It wasn't my problem."

He pursed his lips. "You weren't in the kitchen or something?"

"Well, yes, but-."

"Doesn't count then. Next?"

Chessie laid back against her pillow and sighed, thinking.

"I couldn't save Rose."

George paused at the sorrow in her voice. "I doubt there was anything you could have done anyway. Even if you hadn't gotten in the way."

Apparently the twins had been informed by Lupin or Tonks after they found the girls. Chessie had likely been in the shower at the time. She spent most of the afternoon there.

"Ouch." Chessie retorted. _Please let it just be the night that's making it so easy to talk_.

"I'm waiting for solid proof that you're not amazing. Still."

Chessie groaned. "You're impossible."

"And you're amazing. Go to sleep."

Chessie rolled over on her other side, facing the wall, and she heard George do the same. It was soothing and scary how well they'd connected, and as bad as Chessie wanted to run, she wanted to stick around and see what happened just as much. Plus Rose was still sick. She couldn't leave Rose. _I'd go crazy without her._


	7. The First Full Moon

Diehard Unicorns are mine. I think, having made them up with such a kickass name, I might have to elaborate on them someday. They're a pop band, I've decided. The kind that giggly eleven year old girls listen to. evil giggles

* * *

The third day in Fred and George Weasley's lair was the one in which Rose's fever broke and she could stomach solid foods again. She sat at the table in the cozy little kitchen, her thick owlish glasses bringing out the recent sickness left in her face. Remus Lupin sat near the stove sipping some of the omnipresent herbal tea while reading an article on 'the werewolf menace' and chuckling every now and then at something in the article.

Mrs. Weasley was busily baking something vaguely chocolaty while doing dishes and humming along with the radio. The twins were downstairs on the first floor, running the shop with Verity, their only employee and Fred's casual girlfriend.

Chessie was curled up in the chair by the kitchen door writing in a notebook meant for finances. Every so often she'd ask Rose if she preferred knee or ankle socks, skirts or dresses, etcetera. Chessie herself was starting to get tired of wearing the same two bathrobes alternately each day. Mrs. Weasley had offered some of the castoffs of someone called 'Fleur', but the name alone was enough to repel her. She was making a list. Until she could find another job, there was no way to get money to support herself. Fred and George's hospitality would surely only last so long, so she was planning on at least having some halfway decent clothes for Rose and herself when they got sick of them. So far, she had a pair of pants and a t-shirt, a sundress, a light jacket, some second hand shoes, and one white sock for Rose. Enough to get her through the summer, hopefully, if she could find another small white sock. That alone had cost her almost thirty-five of her fifty remaining galleons.

For herself, she had an old yellow shirt featuring a unicorn choking on a music note with the words 'Diehard Unicorns' in shiny happy letters beneath it that she'd taken from the back of Fred's closet, and a patchwork skirt Mrs. Weasley had brought over that morning, and that was it.

She sighed and, putting the pencil down in her lap, looked out the kitchen window at the sky.

Tonight was it. Rose would be fine. She's young and resourceful and bounces back well. It was herself that Chessie was worried about. Judging by Lupin's presence all day, he wasn't too faithful in her either.

_I'm not going to lose it this time. No way_.

But considering she'd already gone feral once and she hadn't even been a werewolf an hour at that point, she wasn't feeling too optimistic. She sighed again.

Rose looked up from her coloring book and crayons. "Are you okay, Chessie?"

Chessie jumped a little.

"Yeah. I'm…okay."

"Are there voices in your head too?" Rose asked in her sweet young voice. Lupin watched the two over the top of the newspaper and Mrs. Weasley kept tinkering around pretending not to be acutely listening.

"Yeah. But I'm getting used to them."

Rose frowned, digesting this.

"Will the voices go away?" She finally asked softly. Chessie unfolded herself from the chair in the corner and sat by her six year old.

"Who knows? We'll find out together, I guess."

Twisting in her seat, Rose looked up at Chessie.

"But what if you go crazy again?" she asked. Chessie couldn't answer that. She got up and went outside.

"The moon rises in just under an hour. You should be okay until then," the stern matron Chessie remembered as Madame Pomfrey said. Chessie wondered if leaving three werewolves together was wise with a town less than a mile away, but Lupin had chosen the spot himself.

"Moody and Tonks have graciously offered to keep an eye out for you," Madame Pomfrey continued, "so if something unexpected were to happen, hopefully they'll be able to solve it."

Had anyone _not_ heard about Chessie's accident? Probably not. Safety issues. That was part of the reason Lupin was staying with them under mental protection of the Wolfsbane Potion. Having only been 'discovered' for three days, and not having enough anyway, the girls had to find out what being a werewolf was like with no protection at all.

A shiver ran through Chessie's body, both terrifying and pleasant. She could feel the coming moon drawing the werewolf out of her, and hoped that nothing worse than physical transformation would befall her tonight.

The sun was shining cheerfully in her eyes as she opened them, and the blurry face above her gasped.

"Turn the light off," Chessie croaked. Once she spoke she realized that her throat was extremely sore. So was her head. And her legs. And her eyes, even…she shut her eyes.

Someone went to the door, if the sound of hard boots was any indication, and spoke softly to someone on the other side of the door, which then creaked open as lighter footsteps entered.

"Wotcher," the light female voice of the boot owner said. Chessie got a flashback of pink hair and the word 'AUROR' stamped across the back of a black robe. "How sore are you?"

"Very," Chessie said. She reopened her eyes slowly as the shutters were pulled closed and the room wasn't so horribly perky. Tonks sat on the edge of Chessie's bed in almost the same position she had the month before, and stared thoughtfully at Chessie's eyes in silence, her only movement being an occasional blink. Every so often a hint of emotion crossed her heart-shaped face, and then out of nowhere she rubbed her eyes and sighed. It looked as though she was trying to invent the least painful way to break bad news.

"Can someone get a mirror?" she finally said in a tired voice. Molly Weasley had been puttering around again, the ultimate eavesdropper, and handed Tonks a small mirror that had likely once been part of a makeup pack. "Thanks."

"What…did something happen?" Chessie asked, afraid to look in the mirror. _Do I really want to know_?

"You- well, the wolf you- is completely, unmistakably feral. Um, Moody and I are fine, no one got hurt, Lupin's fine, Rose is fine- she really likes that coloring book…." Tonks trailed off as Chessie finally gathered enough nerve to look in the small mirror.

Oh crap. Her eyes, originally green and for the last month green speckled with a rich gold, were now the opposite- gold with the slightest hint of green. Madame Pomfrey came in but Chessie didn't notice.

"…And Lupin's not entirely sure what's going on, but his theories are pretty good." Tonks was talking. Oops. Maybe she should listen. "Maybe it's pent-up aggressions, or something that comes out when your subconscious inhibitions aren't there, or-."

"Or maybe I'm just slowly going crazy," Chessie half joked sarcastically.

"Well, we considered that too." Tonks smiled apologetically.

There was a knock at the door and before anyone could either put a chair under the doorknob or open it, George came in carrying a bowl of delicious-smelling soup, followed by Fred carrying Rose and Verity, the curly blonde employee of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, carrying Rose's coloring book and crayons and a change of clothes and towel for Chessie. All of them were very cheerful.

"Soup! Hot soup, fresh off Mum's stove!" they were calling out while Rose giggled insanely in Fred's arms. The only sign of her night was a Band-Aid on her forehead and a few stitches on one leg. She seemed fine. Chessie eased herself up into a sitting position as a smile rose to her face. Rose kicked her way out of Fred's arms and skipped over to Chessie.

"I'm glad you're okay," Chessie said happy, her golden eyes lighting up with normal, human happiness.

"Yeah! Hey, look at my bruise!" she cheerfully raised a sleeve and showed Chessie a painfully bright bruise that would have but a boxer to shame.

"Wow…" Chessie managed. Rose saw her expression and put her sleeve back down.

"Do you have any pretty bruises?" she asked. Chessie shrugged.

"I don't know yet, I'm sort of afraid to move too much right now."

"You shouldn't anyway, Mum said you'd had a nasty crack to the skull last night," George said, and hummed something out of tune as he set the tray with the bowl of soup on Chessie's lap. "You shouldn't remember it."

Chessie paused in her ravenous attack on the soup bowl. "No...nothing."

Tonks smiled to herself at Chessie's change in mood, and wondered quietly to herself what brought it on. Or…who. At least in her normal shape she was as sane as ever.


	8. Swamps and Public Education

The next few days passed in a similar manner. Chessie stayed on the couch or in the bed, moving minimally and slowly if she had to at all. The concussion from- something- was relatively severe, and even with Madame Pomfrey's potions and George's care and comic relief she was still technically condemned to bed rest for the week. Rose kept her company a lot of the time, but one afternoon they both mysteriously disappeared during one of Chessie's naps. When she woke up, she felt well enough to make a sandwich and grab one of Rose's juiceboxes and go sit on the stairs to the first floor behind the registers, watching the store in full swing.

There was Verity, cheerfully demonstrating a product for a few children too young to attend Hogwarts. Chessie chuckled softly as the innocent little piece of gum stuck to one of the kids, and then rapidly stuck to anything else it touched. Very soon all three children were stuck together wrapped in what looked like pink toffee. Verity watched and laughed as they giggled, and told them the word to stop the charm.

"Mercy."

Chessie, from her perch halfway down the stairs, groaned. Sometimes the twins had a strange sense of humor.

As the afternoon wore on and the absence of customers turned into an excess of them, Verity lost control and Fred had to come out of the back room- the room where the twins worked on new experiments and fixed haywire old ones- to help her. They were both out on the floor, helping what seemed like every single customer on the floor without being too aware of each other, and the registers were empty. A line was growing at them, people waiting to pay for their new stuff. Normally, a third employee- the absent George, in this case- was to be running the registers. The line grew, and the waiting customers began getting irritated.

Chessie sighed as she finished her sandwich.

_Fine, fine, fine._

She ran back upstairs and swallowed a bitter dose of medicine for her head as she tossed on jeans and puller her hair back badly. By the bottom of the stairs were extra purple robes with golden WWW's on them, and as she ran by she grabbed one and threw it on. It was muscle memory from the Shiny Teacup, just as quickly changing the cash drawer and ringing things up fast and accurately was.

The whole crowd, big as it was, only took about twenty minutes to be checked out and herded out the door, and as the last large group left, laughing to themselves, Fred and Verity sighed in relief.

"Thanks for doing the register for me." She said breathily, sliding to the floor against a ravaged shelf. Fred looked sharply at her.

"I wasn't on register."

The two paused, looking at each other, then as one turned towards the registers and saw Chessie checking out a little boy with some sugar quills. The boy said something softly.

"No problem, honey. Here's your change." They heard her say. Chessie walked the small boy to the door, made sure he had the bag in his little hands securely, and waved as he ran off. She turned around absently, still smiling slightly, and saw Fred hanging onto a shelf so his legs wouldn't collapse under him, and Verity spread out on the floor.

"Oh, um…" her smile faded slightly. "I'm sorry, there was nobody on the register and I worked in a diner for years, so I knew how to do it already. And I used a new drawer, so all your money's still there…." She gestured towards the small closet under the stairs where the money was kept during the day.

"You ran register?" Fred said in astonishment, his brain catching up with his ears. "In that swamp? Impressive."

A gust of wind blew in as the door flew open.

"Why, yes I am! Quite impressive, if I do say so myself! And-" George paused midsentence in the doorway in muggle clothes, staring at the mess with a bag of things in one arm and Rose's hand in the other. "What the bloody hell happened here? Did we get busy?"

"Busy?" Verity scoffed. "We were swamped! Where were you?"

"I had to come out of the back, so nothing's done, and Chessie came down and ran register for us-."

"Really?" George looked at Chessie as if he'd just noticed she was there. "What happened to bed rest?"

"I feel fine," said Chessie, who desperately wanted to go throw up. She wiped her dark brown hands on the purple robes, suddenly feeling absolutely horrible from working with a concussion. "I'm going to count down and go take a shower."

And with that, she jerkily, like a child who was caught with its hand in a cookie jar, grabbed the money tray out of the register she'd taken over, took off the robe, and shut herself in the small vault under the stairs, where she sat for a few minutes and took deep breaths, rocking back and forth.

"I'm going to school!" Rose jumped up and down excitedly that evening at supper. She sang it over and over again, enthusiastically, as the twins and Verity (who stayed with Fred as often as at her own flat) and Chessie calmly ate. "I can learn to read better and meet people and-" she paused and sat down, slightly worried. "Do you think I'll make any friends?"

Chessie put her spoon down and swallowed the bite of potato in her mouth, but George responded before she could.

"Of course you will. Just be careful to remember that not everyone will accept you as well as we do."

Fred pitched in.

"And definitely keep the werewolf thing to yourself."

Rose frowned for a second in thought, then perked back up. "Okay."

"But what about injuries, did any of you think of that?" Chessie, although pleased that George had Rose enrolled in the muggle primary school just down the street outside Diagon Alley, was worried. So many things could go wrong. She could be found out. Someone might hurt her. Anything could happen in such a large city.

"You're so pessimistic," Verity complained.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. I saw the school with George earlier. It's small but cool and no one has funny names like Tonks and Verity."

"My name's not funny," Verity said with her mouth full.

"Okay," Chessie said without much conviction. "So say she goes to this muggle primary school and learns her ABCs or whatever. How is she going to get there and back each day?"

"Easy," Fred said. "Either George or I go out every day for something or other. One of us could get her while we're out."

Chessie paused. That sounded reasonable. "And in the morning?"

George shrugged. "She's your charge. You like walking anyway." He studied her expression. "Don't worry so much, Chess. It will be alright. You'll have some time to yourself, we won't have to keep an eye out for her in the shop- it'll work out just fine."

"And by British muggle law she has to be in some form of school anyway," Verity added as she picked up plates. "I went to the library."

Chessie looked at all of the faces around her.

Rose was still, listening intently to the conversation. It was her life. And the law. And some time to talk to other kids might not be a bad thing, she could have some fun. Chessie did sort of want to explore around without having to worry about a child.

Fred was doing this because George wanted to. She wasn't sure why George cared so much. Maybe it was because he was just that kind of guy- but she quickly crushed that thought. No one's nice without a good reason. He just hasn't revealed it yet. Even in her head that sounded false.

Verity was…Verity. She seemed almost crazy to Chessie at times. But working for the twins that seemed to be a prerequisite. Chessie hadn't remembered her at school as an enemy, but definitely not as a friend either. No one wanted to be friends with a wet blanket klepto Slytherin pureblood who read muggle romances when her dorm mates slept or weren't there to harass her. Verity seemed like she would have been in Hufflepuff. But she was nice, and had a wicked sense of humor. And she helped with Rose quite a bit right after the full moon, when Chessie had been indisposed and Mrs. Weasley had to go back to the rest of her family.

They were all nice, and Chessie just realized for the first time how in over her head she was. Looking back, when she was in Hogwarts, she would have never thought she'd be sitting at a table amicably (enough, for her) with two blood-traitor Gryffindors, a muggle werewolf, and a perky Hufflepuff.

_And they still haven't kicked me out._

She opened and shut her mouth a few times, trying to find another reason not to let Rose go, then gave up, throwing her hands in the air.

"Fine," she said, and Rose cheered.


	9. Hot Date

I sort of think this chapter is mushy, but the chapter after the following one is going to start getting dark. Really dark. So...the happy fluffiness...it's not to last for long. Poor Chessie.

* * *

The next morning the trip to school went without problems. The school administrator had originally been confused when tall, dark, lithe Chessie walked into the office with pale, blonde, blue-eyed Rose, but the matter was quickly sorted out. Rose had Chessie walk her to class in a moment of doubt, but she seemed comfortable once inside with other children her age. She was already talking to another little girl- the name tag on her desk said 'Lisette'- as Chessie left.

_Greyback would have a field day in here_, she thought, but banished the thought quickly. Think happy thoughts, like how she had agreed to meet George for lunch in the Leaky Cauldron in a few hours. She wasn't sure what had brought that on.

He'd stammered slightly as he caught up with her right before she and Rose left for the walk to school.

"Hey." He'd said after a few minutes. Chessie raised an eyebrow. She didn't really have time to spare.

"Yes?" she'd responded slightly too curtly, brushing the few wrinkles out of her khaki shirt.

"Are you…that is…." He sighed. "Look, I had this all planned out. Can you look in another direction? I feel cornered."

Chessie decided not to point out that technically she was in the corner, and turned, looking at the clock resolutely. Rose slowed down the tying of her tennis shoes, watching her grown-ups carefully. Something was about to happen. George was never clumsy with words, yet here he was stuttering.

"Would you be interested in meeting for lunch? At the…er, Leaky Cauldron?"

"You're inviting me to a pub?" Chessie grinned and turned around. George was blushing a little. He'd asked girls out before. She remembered him or his brother- she could tell them apart by scent now, but back then she couldn't- having a different girl every few weeks.

"Well, it's close, and sort of cheap."

"Ah. Well, I suppose so. Noon?" Chessie opened the door to walk down the stairs, and Rose slipped under her arm with the neatest shoelaces she'd ever deliberately retied four times.

"Sure." George's blush began to recede. "Great. Thanks. Um." He turned and walked away. A pale arm- Verity's- reached out from a doorway and smacked him upside the head.

"Way to go, Romeo." She said sarcastically. Fred's voice floated out as Chessie shut the door behind her.

"What's a Romeo?"

In retrospect, she could have handled that a little better. Poor George. She was irritated because of a letter she'd gotten from Tonks explaining that her house had been confiscated and her belongings liquidated. That had soured her mood somewhat, and she hadn't really meant to take it out on him. Oh well.

During daylight hours, the street the Leaky Cauldron was on was slightly less than nice. In its hayday, the street must have been amazing. There were a few broken streetlamps- not lights, lamps- here and there that had paint peeled off, and the stores on the street, while mostly occupied and dusted, were all in need of fresh paint or mortar. She wondered briefly how popular this road must once have been and how they could let it fall into disrepair, then banished such fancies from her mind. She left the daydreaming to Rose, and dealt with the cold hard world herself.

What to do until her da- lunch with George? There was still a few hours. Chessie's feet began taking her towards the part of London where she and Rose had been attacked by the two feral werewolves twoish weeks beforehand. It didn't take more than half an hour to find some of the streets they'd haunted, and in the bright morning light Chessie was startled to see how harsh the streets looked.

_It's a miracle we didn't get knifed. Or worse_. She may not be the prettiest young woman, but Chessie wasn't bad looking and that would have been more than enough for a lonely man. She shivered. Why does none of this occur to her before she does it?

She checked her watch, and saw that it had been nearly an hour since she dropped Rose off. Glad of the excuse, Chessie headed back towards the heart of London to get some shopping done before her date.

"So," George said as Chessie dashed in through the front door of the Leaky Cauldron.

"Sorry, so sorry! Stupid blighters that don't know how to get out of my way-." She almost fell into the seat across George. It was a small two-person table in the corner, out of the way of traffic in aisles and people whose chairs crowd each others.

"It's okay. It's only-" he checked his watch, "-two after. Honestly, I just showed up myself. No one's even come to take orders yet."

Chessie studied him, her face unreadable. "Okay," she decided, and relaxed slightly. A youngish wizard came up to the table.

"D'you want anything to drink?" he asked Chessie, who was resolutely staring at the table ignoring him. "Water," she said bluntly.

"Firewhiskey," George shouted as the server dashed off.

"Don't worry about it," Chessie said. "I took his pad."

She held up a smallish yellow pad of paper. "We'll just add it on…" Taking off the quill, she wrote in 'Firewhiskey' in a scribble.

"And what would you like to eat tonight?" Chessie asked in a falsely perky voice, smirking at the redhead across the table. He pretended to intently study his menu, and sighed.

"Can't say I know what I want, do you have any suggestions?"

Chessie paused and glanced at the menu. "You want…soup."

"I do?" George raised an eyebrow.

"Yes. Potato soup." Chessie smiled brilliantly at him. "And I want…."

"The steak and salad." George said. She glanced at him skeptically. He shrugged. "You seem like a steak and salad kind of person."

"Okay?"

Before they could idly pursue that train of thought, the server came back with a pristine glass of water for Chessie and almost threw George's Firewhiskey at him.

"I noticed as soon as you left that you left your notepad thing here. We already ordered, but it's okay if you want us to wait." Chessie smiled sweetly- a look that George found extremely scary on her- and lied smoothly. The young man blushed.

"No- no, I'm terribly sorry, I didn't mean to- I'll get right on it- stay right here-." He almost ran off.

"That was evil." George commented after a few moments. "I underestimated you."

Chessie blinked. "How so?"

"Here I thought I was taking a nice girl to a bar, and she's leading poor innocent wizards on like a queen," He joked, smiling gently.

"It's his fault for thinking I'm interested."

"No, it's your fault for being so attractive."

It was too late; the words were already out. George and Chessie sat in shocked silence for a minute.

"Oh bugger," he said casually, checking to see if anyone else had felt the earth stop rotating for a minute. No one had. It must have been metaphorical then. "I was planning on a smooth delivery and hitting on you gradually over the course of the meal. So… I guess Fred's the charismatic one after all."

"I don't know,," Chessie unfroze the deer-in-headlights look from her face and regained her composure minus a slight tremble in her voice. "That was pretty smooth."

The food came, and after a covetous glance at Chessie and a glare at George, the waiter kid left.

They didn't have nearly anything in common, as it turned out, except for maybe a few lingering memories of Hogwarts and some pranks on Slytherins that had unfortunately affected her too. But that didn't really seem to matter anymore.

Not after how he took her in. Not after how he brought her and Rose new clothes, and definitely not after how he'd taken care of her after the full moon.

Things had changed a lot.


	10. Underhanded Side of the Ministry

Okay, next chapter's where the fic rating starts going up. This is a rather important one though. My fingers are sore from all this typing, but I wanted to prove that I have in fact been writing at school like I keep saying I do. And I still have seven pages I haven't typed yet.

* * *

Rose had a good day at her new school, judging by how she was bouncing around all evening and talking nonstop about her nice teacher and cool new friend Lisette. George and Chessie had been happily puttering around in the store downstairs, as often in the back room as out of it. Business was alright. Life was good. There were no swamps. 

Around closing the next evening, Tonks dropped in for a 'chat' with Chessie, meaning something was happening. She leaned against the stairway as Chessie and Verity finished cleaning up the store for the night and restocked.

"So you've been standing there for how long, exactly?" Verity said cheerfully to Tonks, who mildly checked her watch.

"Only about fifteen minutes, but by all means, don't hurry for my sake. I'm on the clock, and getting paid to just stand here looking nice." She smiled. "It's a positive change."

"No. No, we're finished." Chessie idly tried to run a hand through her frazzled hair, got it stuck, and viciously yanked it out while scanning the store for anything she forgot. She walked over to Tonks calmly, with Verity bouncing around beside her.

They went upstairs, where Chessie promptly went into the kitchen and began fixing something simple for dinner.

"Work, work, work," Tonks commented as she tripped over a chair and landed almost gracefully in another.

"She does that all the time, it's a Chessie thing." Verity explained. "We'd complain, but the place looks great and none of the rest of us are any good at cooking. So we tolerate it."

"Not that you visiting isn't a nice surprise, Tonks, but what are you doing here? You usually at least send an owl first so we can put some padding down." Chessie flipped something in a pan and turned to the two women.

"Well, see, the thing is…" She ran a hand through her short pink hair in frustration. "We have word through one of Remus's spies that Greyback's plotting again. But more actively than normal. He was being sort of vague, poor man, and it took awhile to get his story straight, but we pieced together that Remus and the wolves he's either gotten to first after the bite or brought back are a bit of a threat to Greyback's pack and rule. Word's getting out in the werewolf community about the two- Remus is an alpha, did you know that?- and sides are being taken."

"But," Verity frowned, staring thoughtfully at the wooden table, "I thought Greyback was working for You-Know-Who."

"No," Tonks glanced over at Chessie, who was concentrating very hard on watching the water in a pot boil. "Common misconception. Greyback doesn't work for anyone except himself. He sides with You-Know-Who because he lets him main and murder freely. It's more of a mutual agreement. But anyway, Greyback's getting a little tense whenever Remus is mentioned, and we've already had another attack during the full moon last week. Penny Savage, one of our aurors, disappeared. We think it was Greyback because he leaves certain…signs, and apparently she's worth it because we haven't seen her or found her body yet. So this is a real threat."

"Your…spy. You forgot to mention why you're telling us this confidential information." Chessie said slowly, pouring pasta into the water.

"I was getting to that. We need a spy, and you're the most eligible candidate."

"How so?" Verity interrupted before Chessie could shoot down the idea. She rested her head on her hands and watched Tonks with interest.

"Well, first off, Chessie's half feral anyway," her gaze shifted to Chessie, "And your eyes match theirs, mostly. Second, you tend to stick to yourself and obviously can keep a secret and think on your feet. And third, you know where to find them. The fact that you haven't is encouraging, but you know where to go."

Verity looked confused. Chessie turned the over off and leaned against the counter. "What do you mean," Verity asked, "Chessie's been here."

"No."

Tonks and Verity both looked over at Chessie when she spoke. She studied the floor. Beige tiles, how quaint.

"I wasn't always here, Ver. I've only been here three weeks. I came with Rose two weeks before the moon. We'd been out on the streets before that." She took a deep breath. "We stayed in a rather…dirty …part of London for awhile, and I could tell from around the corner that there was a…place not far away full of ferals. Sometimes, after Rose fell asleep, I would see them walk by. Bug boys, the lot of them. Well, almost all boys and men. I have a feeling that the females were either toys or in charge."

"Crate Alley?" Tonks asked quietly.

"Yes."

"Very rough part of town. It's sort of surprising- but then, you're rather surprising yourself. Very easy to underestimate."

Funny, George had said almost the same thing just the other day. Maybe there was some merit to such a claim. But Tonks was right. _I could do it_, Chessie thought with surprise. _I could pull this off._ But, as always….

"What's in it for me?" she asked. Verity blinked. How surprising. Well, maybe not.

"The satisfaction of knowing you've saved and/or liberated dozens of potential lives?" Tonks tried without much feeling behind it. Chessie snorted.

"I was in Slytherin. That doesn't mean anything to me."

"Well, that's the best you're going to get out of the Ministry. You know that."

"They're not trying. Until I get a better offer, I say no."

Tonks looked cheerful and clapped. "Hey, you're even considering it. This it going so much better than I thought it would!"

Chessie thought for a minute. "Didn't the Ministry liquidate my house?"

"Yes," Tonks replied slowly, her enthusiasm put on hold.

"Where'd the money go?"

"To Gringotts, in a special vault the Ministry rents for such things."

She considered this. "Who has access to this vault?"

"Scrimegoer alone."

"For me to spy for him in the potentially fatal setting set before me, I want a small but nice flat near here and six months free rent once I'm done."

"Are you serious?" Tonks raised an eyebrow in amusement and growing joy.

"Yes, I am always serious. And I want this apartment with two rooms and a big bathroom. Bath and shower. And lots of windows for Rose."

The room went silent, with Tonks thinking, Chessie waiting, and Verity in silent shock at the proceedings. The Ministry, through Tonks, was being crafty with a species unrecognized by the Ministry as human. Things like that didn't happen much where there were witnesses.

"Okay," Tonks said. "I'm going to have to completely exhaust my connections and favors, but it's doable. Don't do anything until I get back to you though. You know Scrimegoer cheats."

"Unfortunately for him," Chessie said lightly, turning smugly to the fridge for some butter, "So do I."


	11. Hazing at the Howling

So. We meet again. This chapter is violent, if not extremely graphic. Much Chessie-abuse occurs, and several men get racked. The barista will become a relatively major character, as will Penny Savage, who I mentioned in the last chapter. They're both mine, however the surname Savage belongs to Rowling and you'll understand later...

* * *

All Chessie had to do to get in- escourted, she wasn't entirely ignorant- was walk around Crate Alley until she found the thugs from…was it only a month ago?...lurking around eyeing a prostitute lewdly. She'd lied herself half to death, and they almost fell over themselves to be the ones to bring her to Greyback.

Greyback himself, who was actually calmly sitting in the corner of the dark pub ("The Howling" the faded broken sign said outside the door) by the sooty fireplace, was surveying his pack with a look of fierce pride on his scarred face. _Very fierce pride_.

Chessie was excorted directly to him by her thugs, who stopped short and shoved her hard to her knees in front of Greyback before promptly backing up a few feet and waiting, immovable as big ugly statues. She decided to stare at the ground for a moment and get her breath back and let the inevitable bruises on her knees start forming. Her frizzy dark hair blocked her peripheral vision, and she'd never been so acutely aware of eyes on her back, not even at Hogwarts.

"I remember you," Greyback rasped. His voice sounded as though he'd taken some hard blows to the throat in his day. And had it slashed at some point, judging by the nasty ragged scar. But then, Greyback had been a werewolf longer than even Lupin, and Lupin had around thirty five years under his belt. Chessie didn't even have one. She wondered suddenly how she managed to get into these situations.

Maybe the Ministry was so willing to comply to her demands for reasons other than her pureblood heritage, disgraced though she was. Maybe they figured she would die and all they'd have to furnish would be a lain coffin, provided they even found enough of her to bury. How incredibly depressing. At least Rose would be okay with the Weasleys and Lupin.

"I remember you well," Greyback repeated to himself before addressing Chessie. "You tried to save that girl."

He stood up quickly, grabbed Chessie's arm, and twisted her around so all the patrons of the pub could see her.

"This is the girl who gave me this scar," he raised a tattered grey sleeve to reveal a mostly healed gash on his bicep. Chessie didn't recall giving him that, but it looked like something the Severing Charm could do. Greyback chuckled. "And look at the scar I gave her."

He lifted Chessie's shirt up to reveal the nasty patchwork of scarring across her ribs and upper stomach from the bite. Many of the patrons of the pub jeered and catcalled. At the bar, a fierce-looking tanned woman, probably only a few years older than Chessie, watched her with a thoughtful look while cleaning glasses.

"When my wolves tried to bring her back, she escaped them."

"The little brat-." One of my thugs- _my_ thugs?- interrupted, looking anxious as well as really, really big.

"That little brat is nothing. Not when we have such a better prize on her knees before us." More catcalls. Greyback held up a large hairy scarred hand and the pub went silent. "But that doesn't change the fact that she ran, even if she came back. So what should we do?"

"Make her fight Burt!" was the best suggestion Chessie heard, and the only one that didn't involved some sort of involuntary sex. Fortunately, Greyback chose that one.

"Burt?" he called out viciously, releasing Chessie and sitting back down in his corner. Chessie was alone in the circle of light from the one working ceiling bulb in the center of the room. She stood up slowly, pulling her shirt the rest of the way back down, and looked around warily into the darkness around her. She still hadn't said a word.

A wall lumbered towards her. Well, maybe the wall's cousin. This was the largest man Chessie had ever seen by about a foot and a half. Somehow, though , Chessie wasn't worried once he'd gotten close enough for her enhanced senses to check him out. Maybe his size was supposed to intimidate her. It wasn't working nearly as well as it probably should have been. And his eyes, though the gold of the others, weren't mean. They were the eyes of a simple man who'd never grown up. She briefly wondered how many other like him Greyback had hidden away before Burt clocked her square in the face with a cinderblock of a fist. She slid several feet across the floor to ethe edge of the light, where dirty, leeching hands shoved her back into the ring of light.

Maybe Hogwarts hadn't been so bad after all.

She stood up slowly, clutching her gushing nose, and studied her opponent. She culdn't use magic. That was one of the first things Tonks and she had agreed on. Greyback may or may not have seen the stick in her hand a month ago. If he had, well, he gave no sign of it. Lupin had said that he laid all his cards out when he played. Unfortunately, he had very good cards. It looked like Chessie was going to have to either exhaust him or fight back.

_I'll fight. There's no way I'll live if I'm gentle now_.

She took a deep breath and spit some of the blood that had gotten into her mouth onto the floor. Some of the wolved quieted down as she took her hand away from her painfully throbbing face, and focused on Burt with narrowed eyes.

He waited for her to get in his range, and swang again. But he missed. Chessie ducked at the last second, and, fighting nausea and vertigo and the urge to go cry in a corner, kicked Burt between the legs as hard as she could, figuring it would slow him down. His small eyes grew wide as he slowly fell to his knees and his humongous hands went to his crotch, which gave Chessie just the opening she needed to throw a roundhouse kick with a booted foot into one of his temples. Burt kept falling, and then lay on the ground still.

_There's no way that's all, it was way too easy_.

But it wasn't really, she pondered as Greyback, half-amused and half angry, threw another large stupid werewolf into the dim circle of light to fight her. What these boys had in size and muscle they lacked in strategy and skill. Fortunately, Chessie had skill and could fight like a demon when cornered, and if she wasn't that big at least she was moderately tall. And pissed.

This werewolf fell to nearly the exact same technique she'd used on Burt (who was still laying there unconscious), as did the wolf after that. Before the mob could throw another victim in to get pounded by the angry pureblood, Greyback stepped in and eyed Chessie. She looked awful- bloody and sweaty and with a little bit of spit on her from the crowd, but the look Greyback gave her make her insides freeze and made her wish that she'd just said no to Tonks and ran off.

"Before I admit that you've finally come to your senses, I have one more fight for you. If you live, then welcome. If not, then you're not my problem anymore."

Cue insane gleeful jeering. Greyback launched himself at her. The next few minutes were beyond thought. Greyback attacked relentlessly, and Chessie wasn't trying to fight back, just block what she could and stay alive. Random parts of her were bleeding, and her left elbow was rap idly swelling and didn't bend well. After a few more minutes that seemed like lifetimes each, she fell down, gasping for breath that didn't come. Sweat and blood were all over her and stinging her swollen eyes, and she wanted to die.

But nothing else came. She coughed up some blood and rolled over onto her side and waited, wheezing hard with her eyes screwed shut. But nothing else came.

"Well," Greyback rasped. It didn't sound like he was even panting. "She lived."

The room was silent.

"Welcome aboard," he said, dragging her roughly to her feet and slapping her back hard enough to send her into another coughing fit.

Greyback chuckled menacingly as Chessie fell back to the ground, unconscious, as soon as he let go of her.


	12. The Stolen Children and Bartender

What is going on with fanfiction these past few days? Grr. Stupid.

So. Slightly longer than normal chapter. Bartender is also mine. Etc. I'm so tired.

* * *

The next few days were the stuff of nightmares. The camp, consisting of a few small or medium-sized fires scattered around a large one and whatever meat the werewolves brought in, was in the middle of a forest. There were no showers. There weren't even any permanent building. If someone got sick or too injured to keep up with the lifestyle, they would likely be dead by the next full moon. They would not be buried, or even remembered. It didn't work like that. The mores of society were for civilized people, not a bunch of ragtag feral werewolves in an ancient English forest.

The first month of her newest life had been marked the night before, and Chessie had woken up with the increasingly familiar desire to die and a deep feeling that no matter how bad her life had seemed at times, it had never been bad enough for this. She briefly considered how many, if any, Death Eaters had felt the same way once it was too late to get out.

Being the new wolf, and a young female at that, many of the older male wolves had been interested in her. It made sense, from a base animalistic sense. But Chessie, wolf or human, had quickly dissuaded any attempts on her with enough severity that she was left alone with the children after about a week.

The children.

No one wanted to go near them. Perhaps their young faces, innocent looking despite their lifestyles, reminded the older ones of their own broken dreams or lost humanity. Greyback never really paid attention unless someone was acting up, or for…other…reasons that had made Chessie take a few moments to herself and pull herself back together after she found out. It did explain why Greyback hadn't taken advantage of her though. At nineteen, she was too old for him.

It was almost sad how the children- the six who still felt fear, who hadn't been fully brainwashed yet- had taken to Chessie so quickly. There weren't a lot of them at all, but more than enough. One child werewolf was a child werewolf too many. Six scared, hungry, lonely, neglected children made it hard for Chessie to keep her composure. One in particular, a dark-haired pale girl with no name, captured her attention.

_It was her eyes. No child has such haunting eyes_. They weren't gold or some shade in transition. They were deep blue, and full of secrets no child should be privy to. It was hard to tell ages with any of them unless they told her, but all six sane children were between six and eleven, at a guess. They were all too thin and small, except the blue-eyed girl and one of the boys. And also, excepting the blue-eyed girl, they always huddled together. Increasingly they huddled around Chessie. She wouldn't let any of the men drag one of the girls off for anything. Not even Greyback. For now it amused him.

She put up a front, of course. She was teaching them how to detect weakness, read body signs. How to punch, how to kick.

How to run. And the basics of blending in. And they were almost falling over themselves to learn it all after so much neglect. The blue- eyed girl was the worst at trying to defend herself, and for awhile during her first few weeks with them Chessie was confused. Was the girl mental after all?

But it all made sense one night when Chessie had been scoping around the camp and discovered the girl humming a tune Chessie didn't know while sitting in a nearby patch of daisies like a strange extension of the flowers themselves. An idea had sprung, and the next day she tried giving the girl some freshly-picked wildflowers when she 'fought' right in training. It worked. In her mind she started calling the girl Daisy and coming up with names for all the other children who, for various reasons, had decided to forget or deliberately not go by their own names.

The pretty brown-haired little boy who put his heart into everything he did with perhaps a tad too much passion was Beau, for beauty. Passion was the boy's best trait. It kept him alive and strong, even for a half-starved eight year old. He learned quickly, too, and even though it seemed Daisy was somehow in charge, likely because she was the oldest, he was second in command because of his fiery spirit.

The tall and skinny ten year old who had to have things explained to him several times was Wat, because he always said "What?" whenever someone spoke to him without looking directly at him. There was a patch of thick grey hair on the right side of his head that had traces of scarring coming out from under it in thick pale threads down his neck and over one ear in a nasty curve. Chessie suspected he was deaf in that ear, and quickly got over the annoyance of having to speak loud just for him.

The smallest boy was too sweet to have possibly been here too long. He hadn't confirmed his age yet, but he didn't look much older than Rose. So, around six then. He reminded her a lot of Rose, actually. It made her heart ache. He was called Gem.

Carrot wasn't much easier on her emotionally. He had red hair, and even though it was a completely different shade, and there was no physical resemblance at all, he made her think of the Weasleys. It was almost too hard to bear, when Gem and Carrot were together. Chessie purposely put them on opposite ends when the children were in a line for some excursive or other.

Hope was the other girl. She was a mix of Beau and Daisy, in that she was healthy and vibrant yet tended to prefer herwn mind to the real world. She cried at night a lot, but Daisy would crawl over to her and wrap her arms around her and they'd go to sleep uneasily, like sisters who knew just how ugly the world could be. They likely did, if what Chessie knew about Greyback's sexual preferences was correct. That they were whole and mostly in the real world was astonishing.

Chessie sat idly one day near the main fire in the camp, eating a lambchop and concealing both her disgust at raw meat and her inner wolf's joy at it. She listened casually to conversations going on around her. They were mostly of the same things- food, sex, death. It was almost not worth listening to.

"Most of spying," Tonks had said, "is being in the right place at the right time, and being able to pick out what's important from what's rubbish. Oh, and to stay alive. That helps too."

Pretty much everything she'd overheard so far was in the 'isn't' category. The only remotely helpful information she'd gotten were some names, dates of births, a few general group-wide opinions, and a mental list of who might be persuaded to ditch Greyback. One such unknown contender was sitting across from her, devouring breakfast. It was the bartender, from the Howling hazing, who apparently was only a temporary bartender, when the wolves were in town. Her black hair hung in dirty strands down her back, but the strand of string holding it back was clean as possible. She was too thin, like most of them, but Chessie could see, possibly, if she squinted and overworked her meager imagination, what the woman might have looked like once upon a time. Clean. Curvy. Not fat, but with the kind of curves some women would kill for. Pretty. Not remotely stringy and dirty and bone-thin. Chassis's lost quite a bit of weight herself. She'd always been thin, but living on the street had lost her a bit of weight, and whatever she'd gained back in her relatively short stay with the Weasley twins she'd lost living here…there was no scale, and judging by the way the bones in her wrists stuck out, she would have rather not stepped on one anyway.

"You." The stringy part-time bartender of the Howling said bluntly but quietly. "Come 'ere."

She got up and walked nonchalantly towards one of the smaller fires a small distance away. Chessie followed her. No one cared enough to stop either one of them. Nothing interesting was happening.

This fire was occupied solely by Daisy, who was absently poking at it with a stick. The light cast shadows on her face that made it hard to read. The bartender sat down beeside her and motioned for Chessie to sit on the girl's other side. She did. Their backs were to the forests so they knew where most of the werewolves were.

"Hello," Daisy said pleasantly, tossing her stick into the fire.

"Hi," Chessie said, unsure of what was going on.

"Who are you working for?" the bartender said suddenly. Charisma wasn't high on a werewolf's list of favorable personality traits. Bloodthirst? Definitely. Messiah Complex? Sure. Gift for public speaking? Not so much.

Chessie froze, then thawed and stared moodily into the fire trying to figure out what the tipoff had been.

"I didn't know until Daisy told me."

"Do I talk in my sleep?" Chessie asked the eleven year old. Daisy grinned slightly and shook her head. No.

"Daisy trusts me," the bartender said pointedly.

"How does Daisy know? I haven't even started thinking about you yet," Chessie replied in a bland tone that perfectly contrasted with her mind, which was screaming out in pain from overwork.

"I'm psychic," Daisy said happily, not entirely paying attention. She stared off into the distance. Psychic wasn't what Chessie would have called it, but okay. Let's play along.

"Really."

"Yep."

So how do you know I'm trustworthy?"

The girl wouldn't answer. She looked Chessie up and down, then ran off to find Beau and the others.

"So now that you're thoroughly confused, who are you working for?" the bartender asked. Her gold eyes bored into Chessie's, and she leaned forward in anticipation. Chessie felt inclined to lean back, but resisted. Barely.

"How do I know you won't kill me- or oust me- as soon as I say?" Because getting this woman on her side was one of her goals, she just hadn't been planning on doing it so soon. It would be nice though.

"You're just going to have to trust me. Besides, I've know for awhile you were coming, I just didn't know when. Or why the hell you'd come here of all places. Something you don't know- I was there."

There was a silence.

"Where?" Chessie asked.

"There. At the little white house. A few months ago." Chessie froze. "We never run alone. Usually, Greyback'll pick two of us to come with him. After he bites someone, if he's unable to keep them with him or there's complications- like there was with you, witch- that's where we come in."

Chessie was still, staring moodily into the fire. "It's your fault."

"No, it isn't. You and the little bird got away. You came back. All I did was bolt when the aurors came. So don't get pissed at me. There's another way how I knew you weren't here as a lost resort. You'd have brought the little bird with you, not left her somewhere. So I'm going to ask one more time. I have nothing to lose y 'ousting' you. I wasn't raised to be nice. Who are you working for?"

"Lupin," Chessie sighed. The bartender gasped.

"You've met him?"

"I did a full moon with him. Ro- the little bird- is still with him." Chessie wasn't feeling so inclined to talk anymore. Unfortunately, the bartender was.

"You're working for Lupin," she said in wonder. "I didn't know he'd do something so undignified."

"He isn't, technically. I am. Er, the Ministry's in on it too."

"Oh, well, that," she rolled her eyes dismissively. Talk of the Ministry was taboo. Chessie didn't mind; she was uneasy about her deal with Scrimegoer. Something didn't strike right about it.

"I want in," the bartender said. Her stringy hair fell in her face. "I'm not certain it would be any better out in the real world, but as far back as I can remember, I've been here. Twenty-two years I've been a werewolf. I was bitten when I was nine. Do the math if you want my age. But even if the outside world isn't any better, it is because it's not here. I want in. And I know the kids will help, if you let them. I've got ideas, believe me."

Chessie sighed- a personality flaw- and rubbed her temples with dirty fingers.

"Do you have a name?"

"No names. Not here. Call me Bartender."

"What was your name back when you were somebody?"

Bartender looked around, then at the fire. "Julia," she muttered.

"Okay…you're in."


	13. Chessie With A Purpose

Heeeeeeey, long time no type! Sorry. I hit a roadblock, but then I found another route. I attempted foreshadowing, dunno if it worked. My fingers are tired. Enjoy.

* * *

There was another wolf on Chessie's mental list. Bartender had agreed almost immediately upon hearing who it was.

So far, the secret resistance force and spy network consisted of Chessie, Bartender, and Daisy. The other children were now-and-then operatives; only when necessary. There wasn't much being said out loud, in case someone overheard, but there were whispers. Chessie couldn't be everywhere at once hearing everything at once, despite her best efforts, and today was an important day.

Her first six weeks were up.

She and Tonks had dueled out how long she would take to adjust to the wolves. Tonks had been optimistic, Verity the closet bibliophile had been attacking the small bookstore next door to no avail and had admitted defeat, frustrated and clueless. Chessie had been inclined towards pessimism, but they all finally agreed on six weeks, and then meet on the edge of London at a certain little park the first day it rains after that, so scent and small sounds weren't easily heard.

But before she left to see Tonks- the clouds overhead were a stormy grey and the breeze kicking up fall leaves was clean and sharp- she had to go recruit Burt. Her thin t-shirt did nothing to shield her from the wind, and she sincerely hoped that winter would be brief and dry. Doubtful.

Burt was doing brute work, hauling firewood for what looked like months of bonfires, along with a few other of the larger werewolves whose butts she had kicked back in her third new life. Well, that's what she kept referring to this…sentence…as.

Burt used his large hairy hand, which was about the size of a small child, it seemed, to wipe some sweat off his face, and he saw Chessie from the corner of his eyes. He dropped the axe he'd been using in case Chessie got ideas and straightened up, running one of his large hands through his thick dark hair to get most of it out of his face.

"I'm sorry I hit you," he said in a low rumble before Chessie could speak.

"I- er, what?" she was confused.

"Back in the pub. I'm sorry I hit you. But don't tell anybody. I'm not supposed to be sorry." He actually looked anxious, as though despite their large size differences she was going to throw him bodily over her knees and spank him.

"Oh, yes…don't worry about that, it's long past. My nose is all better, see?"

Burt leaned in and studied Chessie's nose. She tried to not lean away but couldn't fight it, not with seven feet of pure werewolf muscle literally in her face. Simpleminded or not, Burt was still intimidating. And smelly.

"Okay," he decided, thankfully backing up to the woodpile and tossing logs onto it like twigs.

Chessie stood there and watched, trying to be patient. It did not come easily. The wind blew again, gustier this time, and there was a soft rumble of thunder in the distance. _Right, I know_, Chessie thought irritably, _I'm going to be late_. She hadn't counted on Burt being quite this simple. Under other circumstances it would be calming, but not today. She had to _go_.

"Burt," Chessie began, knotting her hair behind her head after a small battle. It had passed bad within days of joining the pack, had passed birdsnest, and was rapidly approaching atomic disaster. "Do you…are you happy?"

He paused mid-stroke and stared thoughtfully upwards at the darkened clouds. Another rumble of thunder rolled ominously in the not-so-far distance. Chessie tried to convey interest in Burt's happiness or whatever he was feeling, but inside she was bouncing around insanely, mental clock ticking.

"I think so, yeah. Mostly." Bur decided. He was slow, but not stupid. It just took him longer to think things through, but eventually he'd reach the same conclusion, if not a slightly better one, as a regular average person.

Chessie paused. "Really? You don't want…I dunno, more food or…a roof over your head or something? Most people find that sort of thing important."

Burt glanced up to the boiling sky again to think. Chessie sighed.

"Look, I need to get back to the kids, I'll talk to you more later. Think about it, okay? But don't tell anyone." She instinctively went into the mode she used with the children when no one was looking. It seemed right. "If you tell, you might get in trouble. And we don't want that, do we?"

Burt nodded, still pondering. Chessie disappeared into the forest surrounding as the storm broke.

Tonks was idly leaning against a tree flipping through a copy of the Daily Prophet. Although it was raining earnestly, the tree she was under was thick and it kept her mostly dry. Chessie glomped up through mud and muck, mixed between annoyance that Tonks was so calm and content when Chessie had been literally starving, and sheer joy that the rest of the world was still there, that it hadn't disappeared and left only misery ad hunger, or worse, had only been a dream. The wetness in her eyes, for a moment, wasn't entirely rainwater. But it was only a moment.

"Oy," she said seriously to get the Auror's attention. Tonks looked up suddenly.

"I didn't hear you." What she meant was, "You came."

"No," Chessie tried to thin the mud covering her from the hips down, since cleaning it off would be impossible and fairly pointless at this point. She stayed in the rain, soaking.

"I…wasn't expecting you to show up. Would you like some M&Ms?"

She held out her hand and revealed half a bag of M&Ms. Chessie took it but didn't eat them. Maybe Daisy and Hope and the lads would like some. Their hunger was a little more important than her own.

"Things are…not good," Chessie started. "There's no food or permanent shelter- any shelter, really- and um… no baths or showers. Sorry if I stink." The rain had washed most of the mud off her skin, at least, and she moved under the tree and out of the storm. "There's about two dozen- maybe three dozen- werewolves. I can't be precise, there's never a point when everyone's there together. They're mostly busy finding food and temporary shelters and, er, other things men like to do in privacy in their spare time. There are children."

Tonks, whose gaze had been on Chessie during the conversation, frowned. "Children?" she asked wearily.

"Yeah," Chessie was glad she'd gotten used to the idea of children being subjected to this, so her voice no longer broke when she said it. "There's ten of them, but six are still relatively sane. Normal even. Mostly. Er, all the children are between six and…oh, fifteen-ish, but the non-feral kids are…the oldest one is eleven."

She leaned against the tree beside Tonks.

"Is it worth trying?" the Auror wondered quietly as her hair turned long and black to fit the mood better, and the storm raged around them. The lightning display was quite lovely, if one was into possible electrocution in sacrifice for witnessing beauty.

"Yes," Chessie's conviction surprised her. "It's worth it. I've already got something started. Unburying that seed of discontent in a few- I've got a mental list of everyone who could be persuaded or bribed to switch sides to Lupin, and you'd be surprised at it's size. But…I mean, I understand how stupid this sounds, I think. It is _stupid_. Suicidally. But the results I'm getting are much more than I thought of even in optimistic moments."

"Why? You didn't give a rat's ass about anyone only two months ago. What happened to change that? The old you was mildly intimidating, but Chessie With A Purpose is…It's an improvement, mind you. And it's also nice to know you still think coherently. I think I like Chessie With A Purpose a tad better than regular old Chessie, but as an Auror I have to ask, 'why?'."

Chessie frowned. _Because of the look on the children's' faces when Greyback strides by. Because of how Hope and Daisy have new bruises when I'm not around to protect them. Because of how nobody else will protect them. Because of the expression on Bartender's face when I mention family. So many reasons. And the fact that you'd understand would only make it worse_.

"Just…let me worry about that," was what came out in the end. She'd managed to stay in eye contact with Tonks- gold eyes watching brown, and vice versa, but dropped her gaze to look at anything else but Tonks' face because even though she hadn't said much of anything, Tonks still understood, damn her. The Prophet caught her eyes from Tonks' hands.

"What's this about?" she asked, taking the paper from her.

"Oh, gas leaks, mysterious disappearances, wanted ads, the usual. Oh, that one. The jail thing."

"I heard something about that…some time back. In passing." Out of nowhere the Shiny Teacup and Mary, all in a nice little denial of reality package, flashed through her mind. "What is it?"

"Scrimegoer's been building a werewolf jail in North England. It's nearly done, according to the article. I shouldn't tell you this…" she hesitated, "…but you need to know, so I'm going to anyway. In early spring, pretty much as soon as the snow melts, I'm not exactly sure, the Ministry- Scrimegoer, really- is ordering a… retrieval of feral werewolves on a grand scale."

"A retrieval?" Chessie didn't get the euphemism. Scanning that article didn't help either, it was pretty biased.

"Well, more of a mop-up by the Unmentionables. Arrest and jail those they can, massacre those they can't. Sort of a lose-lose situation, really."

"But they don't know where we are, do they?"

"No, that's why they didn't do it in the fall. No, don't tell me, either."

A small alarm rang somewhere on Tonks' person. "That's my break. I need to et back to work now. It was comforting to see you. Two weeks, first rainfall?"

"Sure," Chessie agreed, and Tonks disapparated, leaving her alone in the storm with a soggy newspaper.


	14. Operation: Rescue the Bloody Auror Pt 1

Oh, wow! I actually mention Harry Potter in this HP-verse fan fiction. Only once, but it's there. In a little sentence in the middle of a large paragraph. But again, it's there.

So the HP-verse belongs to Rowling, including the Death Eaters, Harry Potter, Voldemort, Tonks, the Aurors, the Ministry, Greyback, Bill Savage, and most of Great Britain, etc.

However, the wolves in Greyback's camp, Rose, Chessie, Bartender, the children, and Penny Savage are all mine. And I realized a few days ago that I've taken some liberties with a few canon characters, such as Greyback being slightly less two-dimensional than it seemed in HBP, and pretty much all to do with Bill Savage, but it's my fan fiction, darn it. I shall do as I please.

* * *

Chessie stared intently at Hope, who stared right back with her pretty brown eyes. They both concentrated, laying in the fall leaves of the main camp clearing. Without breaking their stare, Chessie calmly reached out and poked her. From the sidelines, Gen giggled and squirmed but didn't interfere under direct warning from Hope and Chessie, after he sabotaged the first two stare downs they had. Hope almost lost her challenge, wanting to laugh, but she recovered and opened her eyes extra wide.

But it was too late. Her eyes were watering, and Chessie was still going strong. Gem's sideline giggling was infectious, and soon Beau, Carrot, and even Wat were snickering a little. They all shared a united glance, and as one tackled Chessie, ending the game yet again.

Bartender laughed as she passed by and sprawled out in the grass a few feet away. Another werewolf joined her, a tall, rail-thin woman with a few wrinkles and salt-and-pepper hair in a stylish messy bun that fascinated Chessie when no one was looking. Daisy was at their feet in a large shirt that passed as almost a dress on her, off in her mental happy place and absently picking small bouquets of wildflowers.

Bartender looked pointedly at Chessie, once she'd gotten out from under squirming triumphant children, in that 'come hither' expression she had grown fond of recently. Chessie did. As she walked over, the leaves fell off her. She didn't bother brushing herself off anymore; it would only smear things or make them crumble. It wasn't like she could look any worse, after three months without any sort of shelter or plumbing. Her skin, normally a dark creamy shade, was chocolaty, and her hair was bleaching lighter as it grew wilder. Her clothes, originally a clean white shirt and loose leggings, were both about the same shade of unattractive brown. Her shoes had been put to a merciful death weeks ago, and she'd gotten hold of some knives and negotiated with her hair by cutting nearly half of it off, so it no longer resembled atomic disaster, merely a badly-executed sagging afro.

"You're trying to be subtle again, Bartender. What's happening?" she asked, surprisingly cheerfully. The children had already started another game, trying to take advantage of the last warmth of late fall, before winter set in and people started dying. Wat, Hope, and Daisy knew winter outdoors in northern England, and they tried not to let their despair show, or the fact that there had once been other children, before the current ones came. So they simply played harder than before, trying to savor what could be their last few weeks together. It broke Chessie's already mangled heart.

"We found her," Marjorie, the stern-looking lady, said. She reminded Chessie a bit of Madame Pince, which was slightly like having a conversation with a spiky pillow. It hurt a little, but if you risked some pain there were soft spots you could get through to. Marjorie had explained point-blank why she had decided to approach Chessie and her subtle-but-there growing group of tired hungry old werewolves. She herself had been bitten at nineteen as well, and had been interested in how well Chessie was adapting to the abysmal lifestyle that they all led. She'd been impressed more with Chessie's level headedness- once she'd found out that there were no winter preparations she'd immediately gotten Burt and the other strong wolves to start building shelters- than she'd ever been with Greyback at any point in the thirteen years she'd been around him. So she'd decided to follow the girl.

Follow, like Chessie was starting a new pack. But in a sense, that was exactly what she was doing. Hopefully Greyback wouldn't notice, or if he did her death would be quick.

He was usually out though, getting more and more involved in the senseless rampages of the Death Eaters and caring less and less about his ragtag reject werewolves, which had left Chessie a large hole to start bumping herself into, especially since she had plans for actually surviving the winter that involved hunting local wildlife, occasional jots into nearby towns for some looting (She didn't bother leaving any money or apologies. She didn't have any.), and storing up of wood under the shelter of large trees, which seemed to be a first and left her wondering, _how many werewolves used to be here? Even just last summer_? It was butchery, what Greyback did. If it hadn't been clear he was in it more for the chase than the company, it would have been made very clear as the fall wore on and the morning dew began turning into frosts.

The war wasn't going very well either, from what Tonks had told her and the occasional stolen Daily Prophet that the wolves huddled over. Most of them were aware of Chessie, if not actually behind her. Some argued that she was female, some that she was new. Some were just insane. But all agreed they liked how she brought them news from her trips out of the encampment. When she stopped to think about it, it turned her mind. What happened to growing up wanting to be an accountant?

The Aurors were being run ragged by the Death Eaters, but they were running themselves down by trying to keep creating distractions for the Aurors. Both sides were tired, desperate, and had a vague idea that nothing was actually happening and that once all was said and done, it all depended on Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter. That's why  
Greyback, on Voldemort's request, had 'taken care of' one of the Aurors as a sort of threat. Apparently in Greyback's mind that translated as 'eat her'. It was just his luck that the Auror he bit was Penny Savage, daughter of Bill Savage, head of Magical Law Enforcement after Scrimegoer's change of position into politics. He didn't even blink in his duty. And if a gruff aging Auror like him felt any fear, horror, grief, or anything else towards the kidnapping and likely murder of his only child, it never showed in public. Just a small, steely gleam of determined hope, like he wasn't going to give up hoping until he physically saw her corpse.

But Marjorie knew where he was, which shouldn't have been as hard to discover as it was. Chessie had her looking for the Auror for two weeks now, and it turns out she was only two miles away, practically under their noses.

Greyback had announced that he was sick of their attitudes and petty concerns, and was leaving, which meant he was going to maim and murder and he'd be back in a few days. It even worked out that it was starting to rain again, a bitter freezing slushy rain, signaling a meeting with Tonks that Chessie was just going to have to miss. She had more important things going on.

"Okay, Marjorie and Burt, you're with me. Bartender, try to keep anyone from dying. That firewood needs moved out of the rain. Again. And…well, I guess that's it. Um, we'll be back later." Chessie directed, and then headed off behind Marjorie and Burt into the woods.

They soon were alone, silently moving through the wet forest. There were perks to being a werewolf, Chessie decided, that Lupin seemed to barely acknowledge. There was more freedom. People weren't going to trust anything you do anyway, so why not just do what you want? And enhanced sense put life in a whole new level of intimacy that Chessie would have appreciated back when she was just a lonely angry little girl.

Greyback bit the wrong girl. He just didn't know it yet.

With a pang she thought of Rose- her innocent Rose- and George. How were they? Was Rose growing? Was she doing well in school? Did one of the twins blow the other up yet? Personal talk was taboo at her rendezvous with Tonks, but they both had questions burning in their eyes they couldn't hide.

"Chessie?" Marjorie asked calmly, like she hadn't just run two miles barefoot in sleety forest. But then, none of them were breathing hard.

"Huh?" Chessie asked, slamming to a stop and then trying to find her face under all her wet hair.

"She should be about fifty feet ahead. No one guards her."

"Why not?"

"No one knows about her aside from Greyback and us."

Everyone was silent for a few minutes.

"How badly do you think this will piss Greyback off?" Chessie asked.

"Oh, he'll beat you to a bloody pulp," Marjorie responded evenly.

"Right. That's fine then. Let's go." Chessie was already wincing in anticipation of that upcoming encounter, but it was too late to back out now.

The Auror Penny Savage, the whole reason Chessie was even outside of her safe little haven in Diagon Alley with Rose and George, was sound asleep in a bear cage with a large beat-up lock, limbs hanging out through the gaps in the bars. She was still in her Auror robes, that dusty black that had been a wall of impenetrable (mostly) justice Chessie recalled from her youth, except that after three months in a cage in a forest, they were more of a muddy brown and more rag than robe..

"Let's get her out," Chessie decided.

They woke her up.


	15. Operation: Rescue the Bloody Auror Pt 2

Whew, chapter 15! And it's a long'un, too! As always, nothing belongs to me except most of the characters, this plot, a clearing in a forest, and most of the free world's hopes and dreams. Bwa ha ha.

Oh, my? Do I smell a hint of finally-getting-to-the-climax? Maybe it's just that cinnomin roll I had earlier.

* * *

"Was sleepin'," Penny Savage muttered, blinking her dark eyes dazedly. She slowly propped herself up on an elbow and looked calmly at Chessie for a minute.

"You look familiar. Have we met?" she said a little clearer, running a tanned hand through her light brown hair. Chessie decided to play stupid.

"I don't think so," She lied. _Well, technically we haven't met_, she thought as she and Burt gauged the strength of the bars on the cage, _but your father arrested mine once, and we chatted out in the hall at the trial_. That was when she was only seven or so and Penny had been home on vacation mid-Hogwarts, years ago now. But for practical purposes, no, they hadn't met.

"Burt," Chessie said softly, deep in thought. "Would these bars be much of a problem for you?"

Marjorie frowned sharply. "Isn't that a bit…unwise?"

"No," Chessie said decisively. "It is not 'a bit unwise'. It's flat out stupid. There's a difference. But Greyback's going to pretty much murder me regardless, so I may as well have a last little bit of fun. Burt, yank these bloody bars clean out!"

She backed up to where Marjorie was standing in the background, and Penny scooted to the far side of her cage and clung to it, watching the behemoth Burt approach and study the cage a little more with a critical eye. He stood in thought for a moment, then smoothly braced a thick leg against a few of the bars while grabbing another in one large fist, and yanked.

The bar flew out of his hand and clear across the clearing. It landed with a resounding 'shlop' in a swampy patch of foliage. Burt straightened up slowly while Chessie blinked a few times and Marjorie slowly closed her mouth, which was hanging open.

"Um," Chessie said. She snapped back and looked at Penny, who'd squeezed with ease through the space created by Burt and stood there awkwardly by his large hairy bicep. She was tall, Chessie could tell, and in- was in- great shape before being shut up in a cage for weeks. But then, next to Burt everyone was small.

"Now what?" Penny asked quietly, folding her arms across her chest.

"Now you all return to the camp and I keep walking. Daisy and Wat are coming with me this time. So let's go." Chessie said, slowly finding the path they'd came on and starting up it.

"Coming with you where?" Penny's inner Auror perked up. Marjorie snorted a little as they started briskly walking back through the damp woods.

"She goes and talks to an Auror, telling them or him or her everything of any value concerning us. All of us."

"So who are…what were their names…Daisy and Wat?"

Chessie cut in before Marjorie could speak again.

"They're children. Two of many, all werewolves like us. Daisy's eleven and Wat's ten, and they're the eldest. The Auror I talk to is having problems believing me."

"Who's the Auror? Wait, why are you even talking to Aurors? You're a spy, aren't you?" Penny guessed. Chessie had expected that, in a way. Stupid Aurorss don't live very long, and from the information Tonks had given her, Penny had been an Auror for six years and was from a line of Aurors several generations long. It was only a matter of time before she got answers to all her questions, which was part of the reason Chessie, a cheater from a long line of con artists, criminals, and general sleazeballs, wanted her on her side. Penny was fine. Mentally, at least. That had been a lingering concern of Chessie's- after two months with only Greyback for company, had she gone crazy? No, fortunately.

Technically, if she were to turn Penny over to Tonks, she would be done. Marjorie said something.

"Huh?" Chessie mumbled, narrowly missing a stray tree branch.

"You can go home now, can't you? You can leave all this behind." She waved a skinny arm at the soaking wet wilderness surrounding them.

"She can?" Penny asked, using Burt for support as she forced unused sore muscles to start working after a several-week vacation.

"I…can," Chessie said as they hit the edge of the clearing and paused. "But…I don't think I truly can. Not yet."

In one corner, the other large werewolves like Burt were hauling logs and splitting them. The fire, rapidly approaching bonfire height so it wouldn't go out in the rain, was manned by a few haggard-looking wolves. Others were around doing various almost-chores, and in the corner near Daisy's dying wildflower patch, Bartender and the children were huddled up.

"Why not?" Burt asked from behind Chessie. She ignored him, looking around. Things were almost organized. Decent shelters had started going up, and nonperishable foods were accumulating for the coming winter. It almost resembled a normal civilization, a far cry from before Chessie's arrival. Marjorie smiled.

"You have such a sobbing, bleeding heart."

Chessie rolled her golden eyes and started leading them to the fire.

"My heart bleeds not. And if it does, I'm wiping it on you. I could have stuck with rich hot guys, you know."

"She's trying to make me feel guilty," Marjorie said out of the corner of her mouth to Penny, who looked extremely confused. "Notice how it's not working."

"Go…do things," Chessie retorted absently, watching Daisy and Wat slop over in the marshy field to join her. Daisy's oversized shirt clung to her thin frame, and Wat's clothes sagged on him from the weight of the rain and mud. Marjorie led Burt, who was by now carrying Penny like a fragile doll, over to the fire for warmth in the cold rain.

Chessie didn't even pause in her step from one group of werewolves to another; Marjorie and Burt fell out and Daisy and Wat fell in gracefully, as though this happened often. As they reached the edge of the clearing, startled voices around the fire signaled Marjorie's telling of what Chessie had done and where Penny had appeared from.

Chessie didn't really care, she was already preoccupied with an ominous thought- what if Greyback took this as a challenge to his authority as pack leader? Of course he would. He wouldn't just beat the living daylights out of her, he'd murder here. She went from being silly and trivial in his eyes to annoying a few months ago, and had crossed from annoying to a potential problem a few weeks ago. This would definitely put her on his threat list. Bloody hell.

Another reason, left unspoken, that she couldn't just leave- if he couldn't take his rage out on her, he'd take it out on one of the wolves who was openly for her as a new leader. Even if the only reason many of the wolves supported her was because she made sure there was one halfway acceptable meal every day. Food was a powerful motivator when there was barely enough to go around. And the kids- things had been bad before Chessie had arrived to the point that they all had little…quirks. Carrot started hyperventilating if left alone for more than a few moments. Hope would huddle and cry whenever a male came near her. Wat has a phobia of being touched. If Chessie were to leave or was killed, they'd be unprotected. Bartender and Marjorie, the only other adult female werewolves in the pack, would be next. Female werewolves were a hindrance most of the time anyway. Have sex and one might get pregnant and possibly provide yet another mouth to feed, and there wasn't enough food for that. And since Marjorie and Bartender- to Chessie's knowledge- hadn't done anything with any of the male wolves since they fell in with her, the rift between the rapidly dividing pack was growing deeper.

She needed a plan fast.

She was a dead woman walking.

Nothing earth-shattering had occurred out in the real world. Most of the wizarding world was glued to their Daily Prophets or starting Christmasa shopping early, in desperate need of a reason to smile. Tonks didn't look very well, but the bags under her eyes were the same size as Chessie's. Aurors were running double and triple shifts, rounding up Death Eaters. Greyback had been spotted near some northern England town Chessie had never heard of that morning, which gave Chessie a sense of temporary relief. She would live for a few more days then, enough time to form a plan. The massive werewolf execution Scrimegoer kept calling for was put on hold after word leaked out that some trick had been pulled that Voldemort hadn't been expecting and suddenly Potter's side of the war had the upper hand ("And I heard this from a very reliable source- Potter himself- so it's true regardless of what you may hear or read. We're finally winning").

As their meeting grew on and Daisy and Wat started getting restless in their hiding spot, Tonks' expression at Chessie's news darkened while Chessie's lightened at Tonks'. Rose was taking a dance class now, which she was loving, and the twins and Verity were rapidly getting even richer. Lupin was still unemployed, but he'd moved into Tonks' flat (or so she said with a sly smile). They exchanged some stories, and then finally Tonks threw her arms in the air in frustration.

"Alright, I give in. You said there were kids. Prove it."

Chessie glanced at an unusually plump bush not far away, and Daisy and Wat slowly untangled themselves from it and emerged. Daisy looked curiously at Tonks.

"I like your hair. It's pink." She said pleasantly. Tonks paused for a minute, then smiled crookedly.

"Thanks," she said. Wat half-hid behind Chessie, watching Tonks from around Chessie's elbow warily. He didn't say anything.

"I'm Daisy," Daisy said, "I'm psychic."

"Really," Tonks said in the tone of someone talking to someone mentally unstable. The way Daisy usually behaved, it was believable. But so far she hadn't said anything that was definitely something only a psychic could know, so Chessie was inclined to humor her but not take her seriously until she knew for certain what was true. Tonks, being an Auror, was trained to act the same way.

As they chatted, Daisy speaking freely of her wildflowers and her 'family'- which consisted of the other kids, Bartender, and Chessie- Chessie sat down on an exposed tree root. Wat stood close enough that they were almost touching, but not quite.

"She's not going to attack you," she said softly. He studied her with deep brown eyes the same color as Hope's. They actually were together often, Wat and Hope. A thought formed in her mind.

"You and Hope…are you related in any way, by chance?" she said slowly, watching his reaction. A fleeting smile crossed his young face for a second before he realized he was letting down his guard in front of a stranger (who wasn't even paying attention to him).

"Yes," he said in his pre-pubescent gravelly voice. The disfiguring scar on the side of his face and ear that had turned much of the hair on that side of his head grey ran down over his collarbone. Chessie had learned this one day when Bartender had attempted to wash some clothes and had to pin him down and rip it off. He'd gone and hid, but not after giving everyone a picture-perfect deer-in-headlights look and getting extremely defensive.

Chessie thought she was beginning to understand why he had that horrible scar. Hope was family….

"How are you two related?" she asked.

"'S my little sister. I wasn't supposed to be awake."

_Burn Merlin_, Chessie thought as how Wat came to be so scarred played through her head. She could see it- somewhere, somehow, a younger muggle Hope was playing outside at night so she wouldn't wake her parents. They were tired, but she wasn't. But Wat, if he was as protective then as he is now, probably woke up and went to find her. Somehow Greyback entes the scene, charges towards Hope, but Wat tries to protect her and gets positively mauled in the process. Greyback's exhausted, so he only takes a small bite of Hope and bails, leaving the two muggle siblings bleeding in the yard while Mom and Dad slept. That does help to explain why Hope's scars from getting bitten were so insignificant looking.

Chessie studied Wat as he got distracted from her by Tonks' laughter. Apparently Daisy was telling a story. The scars on the boy's face and body were definitely deep enough to fit the scenario, but Chessie just couldn't understand why someone would practically throw themselves away for a family member. She knew she'd been raised self-centrically and as an only child of two moderately long lines of Slytherins, she was biased. But there was a new question burning in her overworked brain now.

"Wat, was it worth it? Living like this, starving and freezing, getting hurt. Watching Hope get hurt? Is family really worth all that?"

She felt sort of stupid for asking a ten year old a question whose answer she should probably already know until Wat turned and looked straight at her with older eyes than a child should ever possess.

"It's always worth it." He sounded surprised at his own conviction. Chessie suddenly understood what she had to do, and how short a time she had to do it in.


	16. Taking Over Tonks' Flat

Sorry it took so long, I got busy with a research paper and then had to plot some more and try to find loopholes. Plus I have a job, so I don't really have hours on end I can just sit around and type these up with. Shame, really, but I need the money. So here it is, the sixteenth chapter (fifteen more than I thought I'd ever write), where dun dun DUUUN! ACTION OCCURS! Sort of.

Tonks, Lupin, Potterverse, and other HP chars and fictional writings of Rowling belong to Rowling. Most of the chars in this fic are mine, but the list has gotten too long to write out. London belongs to me too. I'll sell it if you offer enough.

* * *

Tonks had not been happy with the parts of her spontaneous plan that Chessie had told her. In fact, she'd immediately offered several valid reasons the plan wouldn't work. It was too late though, Chessie thought as she reviewed what needed to be done over and over again in her head. Daisy and Wat were running to keep up through the mud and rain.

"Why didn't you tell that nice Auror about Penny?" Daisy had asked after Tonks unhappily apparated away.

"We need her." Chessie said after a few minutes. "It's all part of my plan."

The girl hadn't been very happy with that answer but let it go, partially due to the pace that Chessie had set back towards the camp. She needed her breath.

The majority of the wolves in Greyback's camp were around the fire, listening to Penny, who was being closely guarded by Burt. As Chessie approached, some of the wolves' heads turned towards her. She stopped by the bonfire partially for effect but mostly because she was starting to feel sick from the freezing rain, and looked around at the faces lit up by the flames. _Another circle of light_, she thought, _who's going to beat me up now_?

"Oh, don't stop just for me. Finish the story while I warm up," Chessie said calmly to Penny, who had halted. She debated an encouraging smile but decided against it; she didn't want to scare anyone. Penny started back up slowly, and for a final few moments enjoyed some relative peace and warmth. She didn't hear Penny's story. It wasn't important.

After the story ended, most heads turned back to Chessie, whose expression slowly grew dark. She stood for a minute, thinking how best to break this to the wolves, then pursed her lips.

"How many of you trust me, for whatever reason? No, don't answer out loud. Think it. I know some of you can still think independently. Why trust me? And if not, why not? I don't really care either way. There isn't a single one of you I haven't wanted to strangle at least once over the past few months. It wouldn't mean anything, as far as relationships go, if I hadn't. Likewise for you. But the point of this is," she paused. This was the part that required delicacy, finesse, and subtlety, none of which Chessie had in large amounts. If at all.

"I'm leaving this hellhole, and whoever wants a second chance at a real life is more than welcome to join me."

The pack exploded into protests, questions, and other noises. Chessie kept talking, because they were still listening despite their voices.

"Those who decided to stay here, with Greyback, winter, and all of this- and very little food, which I and whoever comes with me will leave untouched- feel free to. I don't really give a damn what most of you do. The food's in the ditch over there, and I assume you have enough logs for a decent fire for a month or so. But I know of a place for those who come with me that is warm, clean, filled to the brim with all kinds of food, and has running water and a bathtub." She almost started drooling at the thought of Tonks' bathtub, but controlled herself, "All I ask of you is loyalty. Not for life, I'm not stupid. Just for a few days. I'll be asking you to do a few things that may seem strange or dumb; do them anyway. Feel free to tell me how stupid I am later on.

"I'm leaving in an hour. If you're coming, then come. We'll all go do something incredibly stupid together. If you're staying here…."

She trailed off, unable to finish the sentence even though the words were right there in front of her mind. She had involved exactly the right people to do what needed to be done, but she hadn't mentioned whose side she was going to be taking to these people.

The reactions to her speech were amazing, in a way. It was obvious that the pack was divided, Chessie contemplated as she pretended not to be on the verge of throwing up from nerves and strolled away. The sides had changed a lot, but they were still there.

Most of the next hour, for Chessie, was spent hiding a little ways into the woods, hugging herself and whimpering, wondering why she didn't have a soul.

When she returned to the camp to see how the arguments had gone, she felt a little better. Or maybe it was numbness, because her two thin layers of clothes and bare feet were not taking to the freezing November rain very well. Said rain was piling up as slush on the ground, which cheered Chessie up because it meant hopefully that Greyback would be delayed in his return and that Tonks wouldn't immediately kick them out.

Many eternities ago, Tonks had invited Rose and Chessie over one evening because Lupin, who was pretty much a permanent guest in her flat by then, wanted to talk to them. Chessie had forgotten why. It wasn't very important anymore. But she'd remembered where the flat was, in a neighborhood that was going seedy very quickly. Exactly the place anyone with a sense of irony would place a bubbly, technicolored magical copper and her unorthodox boyfriend. Fortunately, the werewolves would almost blend in. It only there'd been more time….

Bartender walked up, carrying Gem, with a straggly line of children and a few of the wiser werewolves following her.

"You're…is this it?" Chessie asked cautiously, secretly feeling guilty about feeling relieved that the wolves that had chosen to come were all ones she would have paused to get on her knees and beg for as she left. They didn't deserve what was coming in the same way that Chessie didn't deserve the right to judge people's values, but the plan was in motion and no matter how crummy she may feel morally about what she had put in action, it was too late.

It probably would have helped if she'd been slightly more idealistic and hadn't known that there were more wolves that supported her, but were just afraid to leave. It was similar to how an inmate in a prison, upon the end of his sentence, wonders if the bad life he's had in jail isn't preferable to the real world, because it hadn't forgotten about him and moved on. Chessie understood, in a way. She'd only been in exile for a few months, instead of a dozen or more years, and knew in her sinking heart that the world had moved on without her. She just hoped that Rose and George hadn't.

She was about to find out. They all were.

The roads were slick and empty when Chessie, exhausted and ill, knocked on Tonks' door, surrounded by equally tired and hungry werewolves. Burt had had to carry Penny again, and Chessie had briefly entertained the idea that there was something going on.

The sound of someone falling and various related crashing sounds came from within, and Tonks' brown eye peeked through the peephole.

"What the bloody hell? When you said you knew somewhere to go you never said _here_!" she cried out. Another sound was heard: Lupin asking who it was from further within the flat. Bartender gasped and Daisy smiled sleepily.

"Nice to see you too. Let us in. It's sort of cold out here." Chessie said. None of them had more than a few thin, worn out layers of clothes on, and it was snowing. Marjorie was trying to suppress cold shivers, and Carrot, the young redhead, wasn't even trying to keep his teeth from rattling.

Tonks opened the door, revealing an open living room that was toasty warm and smelled of butterscotch.

"Oh…" Kel, the werewolf with the dreadlocks, sighed happily. Chessie could see the bathroom, it was so close….

"I told you I was dumb enough to do it," she said. Tonks rubbed her face distractedly, in flannel pajamas, and moved aside.

"Get in here before you get sick," she muttered. Lupin had emerged from the kitchen and watched while calmly sipping his tea as Chessie, her minions, Burt and Penny, the three male wolves, and the kids piled in, dirty feet likely ruining the light carpet. Tonks looked pained. Lupin looked amused. Chessie knew she looked like crap- all of them did- and that they all smelled like it too.

"Did you-" Chessie began, but was interrupted.

"I have one shower and there are fourteen of you. Get started. You all stink horribly. Remus," Tonks said, and gestured at Lupin unnecessarily, all of them could tell who Lupin was. It was a werewolf thing.

"Remus brought a bunch of clothes for you all to pick through. We'll talk later. Just…please. Get clean."

Chessie grinned a little and started hunting for children to scour in the tub. As Bartender and she led them in the direction of the bathroom, Daisy smiled at Tonks.

"Hi," she said sleepily, but kept walking. She was drawn to the tub as well.

There wasn't enough water left for much other than rinsing off with soap, so Chessie still felt unclean when she started back out of the bathroom in a fluffy pink bathrobe that didn't suit her at all and sat down between Penny and Tonks (who'd had quite the reunion). All the available surfaces were being sat on, and the floor by the fireplace was occupied by the children, blissfully clean. Everyone except Tonks and Lupin looked fairly stupid, sitting awkwardly in clothes that were slightly off fitting right and not even close to matching, like the gray-haired rugged wolf that still hadn't told Chessie his name, who was wearing a pair of nearly orange khaki pants with a stained yellow shirt. He looked like the tiny shreds of his remaining dignity were about to ditch him and join the rest somewhere else. Yet Chessie didn't feel like laughing or joshing him or any of her wolves.

Her wolves.

In a sense that was true though. They'd chosen to follow her, and so far she hadn't given them a reason to leave. She'd promised a warm place with a shower and she'd delivered. She'd said she was going to do at least one extremely stupid thing, and she was about to. Well, what she was going to do, and had already, was past stupid and into pure heartlessness.

As everyone talked and Lupin and Tonks fit the story together, Chessie thought to herself, occasionally pitching in on cue. They all looked silly and knew it, but safety outranked fashion disaster any day. As a few hours passed and the children fell asleep one by one wherever they fell, conversation tapered off.

Chessie figured this was as good a time any to ruin everyone's moods and reveal how truly evil she really was.

"So how's the raid on the camp going?" she asked Tonks lightly.


	17. Where's Rose?

Nothing is nor shall ever be mine except most of this story.

So...ACTION!

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With the looks she was getting, she almost felt bad. Tonks put her now dark-haired head in her arms.

"Tact gave up on you a long time ago, didn't it?" She groaned.

"Yes, pretty much," Chessie agreed solemnly, then wrapped her arms around herself and started explaining to the pack.

"Part of the reason I gave you all an hour is because this morning- yesterday morning, by now- I gave Tonks the location of the camp and an abbreviated list of about how many wolves there were. She- hopefully- passed it on, and overnight there should in theory have been a rain on the camp for that new werewolf jail."

No one spoke, but all eyes and full attention were still on Chessie, and most eyes, especially Bartender's, were bright with anger. She got up and went into the kitchen angrily, arms across her chest. For lack of anything better to do, and a nagging suspicion that things could have gone better, Chessie got up to follow her, leaving Tonks to softly explain in better words what exactly had occurred.

"Bartender…." Chessie called softly from the doorway. Bartender was standing at Tonks' ink, staring moodily at some pink wildflowers, in a purple shirt and khakis that looked horribly strange on her. She didn't respond.

"Julia?" Chessie ventured, taking a step onto the cold tiles. "I, er…probably could have put that a little…less bluntly."

"No," Bartender sighed. "You couldn't. You're even more tactless than I am, which means we're both lost causes. But…jail? I mean…" she turned around, trying to signify through gestures what she meant with words. "That's a little extreme."

:Murder, kidnapping, rape, child abuse, torture," Chessie counted off on her fingers, feeling like a heel.

"Well, yes, but…oh, hell. I don't know. I didn't like them, but…I grew up with a lot of them." She paused to reflect, and her expression grew dark. "Maybe then…. Okay. In a sense I'm glad about that. In another, I'm not. Not with the…stuff that I had to go through, that Daisy and Hope did too. It's better this way, I think."

Chessie waited a minute, then spoke softly. "I don't know what I'm doing. I never have."

Bartender looked up at her, leaning against the counter. "I keep forgetting, you're not much more than a kid."

"Yeah, me too," Chessie leaned against the opposite counter. "I don't feel like I'm only nineteen."

"Life sucks like that," Bartender agreed.

Out in the living room a door slammed, and almost immediately several voices began shouting.

Chessie and Bartender ran back into the living room, where Verity- Verity?- was sobbing madly, surrounded by alarmed werewolves and a pissed-off Tonks, who was diving for a small, plain box on the mantle marked 'floo powder'.

"Verity?" Chessie asked as she stopped dead in the doorway in shock.

Her blonde friend looked just as she did in Chessie's memory- skinny but in a soft way, short blonde hair, and big blue eyes that rivaled Rose's. She was wearing khakis and a pink shirt that were stained with tears.

"Chessie?" She looked up through her hands and tears, and an expression of relief fluttered across her face. "Oh, Chessie-."

Chessie ran over to where Verity was sprawled on the floor and sat down by her. The blonde threw her pale arms around Chessie's shoulders and began to cry all over again.

"What happened?" Chessie asked. "Ver, what's happening?"

"I was going to pick Rose up from school because the nurse called on the muggle phone George had somebody install and said she wasn't feeling well again, so I told the twins I was going to get her and I went to the school and checked her out and-" she hiccupped and took another shaky breath, "- and when I was walking with Rose back to the Leaky Cauldron, a horrible…someone came and snatched Rose out of my arms and ran, so I came straight here but the flat's full and I don't know what's going on!"

"Rose is gone?" Chessie said dully. Tonks turned around from the fire, where she'd been talking by floo to someone. Lupin came and sat down on Verity's other side as Chessie awkwardly patted her on the back like a person being used as a Kleenex should.

"Verity- look at me- what did this 'somebody' look like?" Lupin asked firmly.

"Hmm?" Verity sniffed, letting go of Chessie. "He was big- well, I don't know if he was tall or not but he had lots of muscles and was sort of wide- and had eyes like Chessie and…and all of them," she said, noticing all the other werewolves for the first time.

"Greyback," Daisy said matter-of-factly. "It was Greyback, and they're going to the Howling. That old pub where Bartender works sometimes."

The room got silent. Chessie scooted over so she was sitting in front of Daisy, and held the girl's hands as though they were best friends.

"Daisy, are you sure?" she asked slowly.

"Yep," Daisy nodded, for once serious.

"How do you know this?" Chessie asked, studying the girl intently.

"I told you, I'm psychic. Do you believe me now?"

"You didn't?" Bartender asked wryly.

"I didn't have proof. I'm sort of fixated on that, having proof. I still don't know if I believe her," Chessie said.

Daisy pursed her lips, "I can't really think of another- wait…" she looked at Chessie, "Who're the redheads?" She asked. The other kids and wolves looked confused.

Chessie let go of Daisy's thin hands and sat back. How would she know? She couldn't. Chessie had been exceedingly careful to not mention them. Him. Up until now, not even Bartender knew Rose's name, she was just the 'little bird' back in London. So how would Daisy know?

_She's really psychic_, Chessie thought. _We have a Seer in our group_.

"It's a trap, you know," Marjorie said darkly, leaning over the back of the couch in a blue sundress and with her hair in a tidy French braid that trailed over one of her shoulders. "The kid- Rose- is bait. He wants you, I think."

"Why," Kel, the pale wolf with dreadlocks asked, "is Greyback holding some kid- sorry, Chessie- hostage, when he's supposed to be snowed in in northern England?"

One of the quieter wolves, who had been staring in curiosity at Tonks' antics in the background as she barked questions and orders at various witches and wizards via floo, spoke up in a voice so ragged he sounded like he was choking on cement.

"Chessie showed him up. She started her own pack and left, instead of acting like a sniveling dog like the rest of us. Greyback wants revenge for her ruining his powerbase."

Kel nodded slightly, "That makes sense, but how'd he get here?"

"It was a false sighting," Tonks said angrily through her teeth. "Damn rookies. It was someone else they saw of the right basic shape. Greyback's here in London." She seethed by the fire, hair turning blacker than a kettle.

"Now what?" Beau asked, sitting amongst the confused, scared children near Burt's feet. They all alternated between looking at Tonks, Lupin, and Chessie for solutions. Verity stared at them.

"Are they all…are you all werewolves?" She asked timidly, still sniffling. Several wolves froze. Chessie grinned ruefully.

"Out of everyone in this room, only Tonks and you aren't."

Verity looked around. "Oh," she managed a small smile at the children. "Hi," she said shakily. Beau, Hope, and Daisy moved closer, encouraged.

"Wait," Tonks muttered, "Where are the twins?"

"Closing shop."

"Closing shop?" Chessie asked incredulously. The twins only closed Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes for emergencies, such as quidditch and death.

"Yeah. We decided this constitutes as an emergency. Rose is kidnapped, you're back…."

Daisy pat Verity's back comfortingly.

"So now what?" She asked Chessie brightly, who frowned in thought.

"We need a plan," she said firmly, staring blankly at the carpet in concentration. "fast."


	18. Return to the Howling

Almost done, hang in there! One, two, or three more chapters, depending on how long I want them to be. This particular chapter is a long'un. Sorry. Last week of high school EVER, so I have lots of spare time.

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Everyone hated the plan, but it was the best- and simplest- they could come up with where plausibly everyone lived. The children were left at Tonks' flat with the quiet wolf with the concrete voice and Verity, but everyone else started heading over towards London's armpit.

It was as bad as Chessie remembered- the smell, the gritty road under her feet, the homeless looking at them as they passed with wide eyes.

The plan had three main parts, and all three would have to go with a fair amount of success to keep the plan going.

Part one was being put in action as the rest of the pack approached. In theory, Marjorie, Kel, and the tired-looking wolf who'd told them to call him Matthew were in the pub already, pretending to be humbly groveling and begging for forgiveness while counting heads and finding alternate exit routes. Their story was that Chessie had tricked them- technically she sort of had- but she turned out to be sort of a traitor- also partially true- and they thought Greyback was a better leader. Hopefully he was deluded enough to believe it.

But why were they wearing different things? It'd be stupid not to take advantage of what was offered. How'd they know to go to the Howling? He'd taught them that. Plus it was cold outside, and even though the Howling wasn't much warmer it had enough booze to trick them into believing it was.

They'll also be mentioning that Burt and Bartender were also coming back, but had a special surprise for him.

All they had to do was wait for the signal, one of the pack drawing one of two shapes in the fogged-up glass. A circle for "we're ready", or a rectangle for "we're not ready but I guess it's not a good time to say that, so be careful entering anyway".

They had the third wolf- who'd requested to be called Ben- on lookout in the semi-abandoned store across the street with an exhausted but still constantly vigilant Penny Savage. Lupin and Chessie, who were bracing themselves for a fair amount of pain in the near future, sat behind the lookouts with Burt and Bartender. Everyone was tense.

A circle appeared in the front window of the Howling, and Marjorie's anxious expression was visible for a moment before turning away.

Ben and Penny sighed in relief. No one else did.

Time for part two.

The door burst open and rebounded with enough force to knock Chessie silly from where she was being suspended by the back of the old shirt Tonks had made her trade for. Burt had Lupin in an awkward looking headlock in the other arm, but at least he could stagger along backwards on his tiptoes. Chessie was just hanging from one of Burt's ham like fists like an old doll. At least she had a decent view of the room. Greyback stood in the center of the room, just beyond the far edge of the light Chessie had gotten beat up in in the past. The ghost of her nose began throbbing in remembrance.

To the right, huddled in a corner with tearstains on her face and dust and dirt on what would otherwise be an extremely cute outfit for a seven year old girl, was Rose. Chessie's growing maternal instincts noted that her glasses were gone, and that the flush on Rose's cheeks wasn't entirely from crying.

Rose abruptly looked up and squinted at Chessie with an expression of surprise.

"Chessie," she mouthed, and a tear slid down one of her dirty flushed cheeks.

Chessie felt an identical one slide down her own as white fury flooded through her body. Her inner wolf knew the feeling well. It was the emotion of an animal that knew it was wild and hopeless, and most importantly, feral. Lupin and Burt must have sensed it- which meant Greyback definitely did- and the tension in the room increased substantially.

"Drop them," Greyback commanded confidently, and Burt did. Lupin and Chessie hit the floorboards with a resounding thud and exchanged a glance as Greyback begin a maliciously gleeful soliloquy about the joys of happy endings and the fact that his two biggest rivals were on the ground at his feet, etc.

Bartender had been slowly sneaking around to the bar, where underneath she had access to several weapons- mugs, a spray nozzle or three, and a thick club she'd confessed to have a considerable amount of skill with.

Marjorie, Kel, and Matthew were lurking around the edge of the light, and a few other wolves Chessie recalled from the camp were glaring at her.

"You've been such an interesting person to have around. Quite the busy little werewolf. Always pushing people, taking control of my pack. Denying us the simpler pleasures in life-."

"Raping children." Chessie growled. Had he done anything to Rose. Surely not, not much time had passed. She tried to tell by glancing at her, but Greyback noticed where her attention was and pulled Rose over to him by one of her skinny biceps.

"I'm hurt," he drawled lazily, running a rough hand down one of Rose's cheeks, "that you think I would do anything so…predictably wrong to any child. Especially for revenge."

"Revenge," Chessie heard herself snarl. Behind Greyback, Marjorie kneed one of the few wolves who'd escaped the roundup at camp in the groin and muffled his gasp and fall to the ground. Kel did something to another- as he passed the wolf went from vertical to horizontal.

Greyback stood hunched over Rose, who was silently crying again. Although tall for her age, she still looked small compared to the monster lurking over her. His hand was still on her face. Chessie stood up slowly, shaking with rage, mind pleasantly blank.

"This is revenge," she said coldly, and launched herself at Greyback. He threw rose bodily away from them, and she hit the bar with a whimper. Bartender, who had leapt onto the bar with her beloved club in one hand and a spray nozzle in another, hopped down to hide Rose out of harm's way for the time.

With her out of the way, things could escalate. The plan was to incapacitate Greyback and his four wolves, but Chessie wasn't feeling remotely nice enough to stop at mere incapacitation. Decapitation would make her feel better.

All of this was pondered in the second Chessie was off the ground, flying through the air towards Greyback with her arms outstretched. He brought up an arm and it felt like Chessie was hitting a wall. She landed in the poorly lit circle on the floor, but got up. The pain was fueling her anger. Lupin had gotten on Greyback's other side and was distracting him (getting beat up) while Chessie recovered; she launched herself at him again, succeeding this time in getting her arms around his throat and hanging on for dear life as he roared and flailed.

She had a good, if not brief, view of the door, where Penny and Tonks kicked it in true police fashion, followed by what seemed like half the Aurors in the Ministry with any level of true talent and instinct. She noticed Kingsley Shacklebolt and Bill Savage among them.

Everybody with Lupin and Chessie stopped fighting slowly backing up and making it exceedingly obvious that they meant no harm, taking all of what Tonks and Penny had advised them to do verbatim. Lupin and Chessie themselves, though, were slightly distracted by the large angry werewolf trying to escape.

Tonks shouted for Greyback to freeze, but he didn't.

The same with the second time, and when Penny tried.

Chessie, who was still hanging on to Greyback's back with her arms around his neck, met Tonks' eyes and gasped, quickly bracing her feet against Greyback's back for one final leap. She waited for the right moment, and as soon as Bill Savage began the spell she launched herself backwards as hard as she could at the same time Lupin dove for the ground, both hoping they wouldn't wake up in jail in a few days. She heard something crash under her and a throbbing pain in her skull that drove the remainder of her feral fury out of mind completely- she'd landed on the back of the bar, where dirty half-empty bottles of beers of different varieties were broken and digging into her skin.

_Inebriation actually sounds pretty good about now_, Chessie thought, but resisted.

After about three times the amount of stunning and sleeping spells than is healthy, Greyback slumped to the floor unconscious, and everyone who wasn't busy arresting the unconscious wolves breathed a sigh of relief.

Penny pulled rose out from a cupboard behind the bar and hugged her while she cried; Chessie slowly sat up and began picking glass out of herself. Lupin wheezed something from the floor, making Tonks laugh. The sound was almost foreign, but it was welcome.

Tonks must have given descriptions of who not to arrest immediately, because as Aurors began taking Greyback and his wolves to that werewolf jail, all of those wolves who'd been helping gathered around Tonks and Bill Savage. Bartender was helping Chessie, who was bleeding in several places and generally cussing out the world. Penny was still holding Rose tightly, but to Rose's credit neither of them were crying.

"Penny," Bill Savage said in an old weathered voice. He faced his daughter.

"Dad," her voice broke slightly, and she handed Rose off to Marjorie, who was silent for once.

They looked alike, Chessie thought through a haze, now that the fury was gone and pain had taken it's place. Both Savages were sinewy and tanned, and had brown eyes. Bill Savage's iron grey hair had once been sandy brown like his daughter's, if Chessie's memory served her right. Under normal circumstances Chessie wouldn't have noticed this.

"I was so worried," Bill Savage said softly, approaching Penny.

"Me too. But I'm okay, mostly. Just…different. And I have this nagging concern that I'll be moving back in with you soon." She said carefully. Every werewolf present, barring Chessie and Rose, knew what was supposed to happen next. The tearful reunion was in progress, next would be the right-wing extremist debasing the werewolf and scaring off any friends and allies they might have had left.

Scrimegoer strolled in like a king in the low-rent district of his kingdom, looking down his nose at Chessie's entourage.

"Cue the antagonist," Marjorie muttered, and Kel and Matthew nodded slightly.


	19. Scrimegoer's Verdict

THIS IS THE LAST CHAPTER!!! HOORAY1!! It's been thrilling to write this, so I'm leaving the ending open for future expansion. My fingers hurt (not just from the typing, earlier I attempted to donate blood. Don't have enough iron in my body, so I got finger-pricked for nothing. It hurts a little when I hit the letter 's'.)

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"What's going on, Savage?" Scrimegoer asked angrily, flanked on either side by some very toned wizards with low tolerance levels for stupidity.

Chessie took her arm off Bartender's shoulders and straightened up warily, causing glass to fall off her clothes and hair and make delicate noises on the ground that clashed with the mood.

"Minister," she said with as much Slytherin hauteur as she could conjure up on such short notice. It wasn't working. A strange inner relief and excessive adrenaline was making her giddy. "Care for a drink?"

She held up a piece of a broken bottle for him, and he stared at it like it was a slug. She grinned slightly maliciously. The point wasn't to look stupid- not that that was very hard, at this point, no one had slept well for nearly twenty four hours- but to point out how many people, injured and other, were still around. It worked. Scrimegoer's small eyes scanned the room with an Auror's ease, noting everything. He then chose to disregard it as beneath his attentions and returned to the Savages.

"What the bloody hell happened here, Bill? No two Aurors are telling the same story, and I want answers!"

"He almost sounds like a child," Kel commented softly to Ben, who hastily hid his smile with a dirty fist.

"No, we should be telling about the same story." Tonks said, frowning pleasantly. Both she and Bill Savage tried to explain all that had occurred in the past twenty four hours, which made for some strange storytelling. Tonks got to the part where Chessie had found Penny Savage, and Scrimegoer held up one of his hands.

"Were you bitten?" He asked Penny bluntly. She hesitated, then took a breath and looked him in the eyes.

"Yes, on my leg."

"Do you still have your badge?" He asked. It was more of a command.

"Oh, dear," Marjorie whispered softly, moving herself in front of Burt, who was barely keeping up with the turn of events. Penny reached into her only remaining unshredded pocket and pulled it out slowly.

"Give it to me," Scrimegoer said, and the room erupted into angry protests and shocked commentary. The few Aurors present- Kingsley Shacklebolt and a few others of his caliber- who had returned to the bar to see if anything else needed taken care of didn't stop them.

"Are you firing me?" Penny asked, surprised. _Surely she'd been expecting that_, Chessie thought to herself, avidly watching the conversation. But judging by the expression on Penny's face, she really hadn't. But then, no Savage for the past eighty years at least had been fired from the Ministry. It was a trait they boasted of at social gatherings.

"There is no place for a werewolf in my Aurors, Miss Savage. Now take this with some dignity and _give me your badge_."

Penny looked at her cherished and hard-earned gold badge sadly, like a puppy getting neutered, and began handing it to him slowly. Tonks reached over and slapped her arm down right before Scrimegoer could take it.

"If you fire her for being a werewolf, you'll have to fire me too for being a metamorphmagus." She told him hotly.

Scrimegoer rolled his eyes. "Now, there's no need for this-"

"And you'll have to promote someone else to Commander," Bill Savage said reasonably. "I've been debating retirement, these past few months."

"That's beginning to sound reasonable," Scrimegoer said angrily, turning to Kingsley.

"No," was all he said, and brandished his badge to turn in as his resignation notice as well. The minister's eyes narrowed behind his thin glasses.

"Are you all going to quit on me if she's fired?" he asked irritably. Various affirmations.

Watching the scene with half a mind, Chessie turned to Rose, gently wiping her face and brushing dirt and glass off her clothes to the best of her abilities. This wasn't her fight anymore.

"Then I suppose I have no choice, do I?" Scrimegoer said, irritated.

Bartender gasped. "Oh, he's going to fire all of them!"

"Miss Savage is not fired, then. For now. But only because I can't afford to lose my best Aurors over something so stupid, not until this bloody war's over."

Penny sighed in relief as her father put a supporting arm around her shoulders and Scrimegoer stalked off. Chessie had a recollection and stood up.

"Where's my flat?" She shouted after Scrimegoer, who merely paused in the doorway before muttering something and continuing out the door.

"I take it that's a 'no'?" Chessie guessed.

"Likely," Tonks said, putting her own badge away fervently and rubbing her eyes. "We'll worry about it later. I'm pretty much dead on my feet, and you're covered in glass. Rose needs medical attention, so I'll get-."

"No," Chessie said slowly, "Let me worry about her. Bartender? You're in charge. Tonks?"

"I know, back to my flat with the lot of you. I'll try to get Pomfrey over, or another Healer who takes their oath seriously." Tonks rolled her eyes.

"Thanks," Chessie said gratefully, and picked Rose up. She was a little heavier than she used to be. Either that or Chessie was weaker. Probably both. Bill Savage was going to get a Healer to look at Penny as well before taking her home. Tonks was taking care of the wolves. It was time to go home.

As they walked out the door and Chessie let her feet take over navigation, she pondered about nothing and everything, listing what she needed to do, what she wanted to do, what she wanted to eat, and more. She was out of lists very quickly; lack of a very expansive social or private life does that.

A concern haunting her was whether or not she'd changed. Obviously she had physically- she was much skinnier, malnourished, and self-inflicted haircuts had left her with a strange frizz of multilength hair. The remnants of her bad highlights were long gone, leaving only the blackish-brown of her natural hair color.

Mentally, though, she knew she'd changed quite a bit. Six months ago she'd been stuck in a dreary repetitive safe life that was going nowhere, trying to deny anything that wasn't comfortable to hear. Six months ago Rose's parents loved her. But recently especially, she'd gotten comments from growing friends like Bartender and Marjorie (Friends! Finally!) about how confident and decisive and leaderly she'd become, or all three. Chessie wondered if that was a good thing as she shifted Rose on her hip.

The Leaky Cauldron slowly crept closer as Chessie's sore feet led her and Rose down the road. There was an alley that went around and behind the pub, for those who didn't want to socialize, or in Chessie and Rose's case so they wouldn't scare anyone. Tonks had slipped Chessie her wand earlier, right after Greyback was drugged and dragged off, and she tapped the bricks in the right order after a few lazy tries, and slunk through Diagon Alley's back alleys towards Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, which even closed would still have somebody in it.

Home. She didn't really care very much anymore if she got her flat or not. She actually liked her stay at the twins' place, cramped as it got sometimes, which was something else she'd never have known she loved until it was thrust upon her.

The steps to the door were muddy, but Chessie's feet were dirty, sore, and cold anyway so she didn't mind stepping on them heavily. She shifted Rose again to her less tired hip, and rang the doorbell.

There were footsteps on floorboards inside- the one by the bathroom squeaked when you stepped on it crooked- and George opened the door quickly, staring in shock at Chessie, who broke into a sloppy grin and handed him Rose.

"I'm home," she said peacefully, and went inside.

The End


End file.
